Machine Translation v/s Customised Translation
Translation is an elemental tool of communication between companies, businesses, customers, organizations, and even countries. One of the most common ways of getting any translation done is to have a professional translator or a translation agency do it for you. However, for the past few years, there has been the emergence of machine translators, which are becoming popular day-by-day. Machine translation has evolved significantly over some time now. It has gradually reached down a point where most scholars use Google's translation services and other similar apps for help with their foreign language homework. But is it really worth using them? Before finding it out, just want to clear that Al Hadeed Translation Services in Dubai provides 100% human translation.
Machine translation
Over the past years, machine translators have become more accurate with the programs learning more-and-more about words and content. The reason is the drastic change in technology as the majority of the booming industries have started venturing into artificial intelligence, alias AI and machine learning, which has made machine translation and automatic translation services a driving force behind their development. Therefore, it is evident that even companies like Google and Microsoft are serious about automatic translation.
Customized translation
Machines and self-help programs are replacing people at workplaces. It’s going to get tougher with time too. However, it is not definite that machine translation can fully replace customize translation. The question here is how efficient machine translators can be and if they replace professional translators. Which one is better? The answer here is simple.
Machine translators will never replace human translators when it comes to the aspect of accuracy and efficiency. Let us look at a few glaring reasons why machine translators can’t replace human professional translators.
1. Machines cannot understand the culture
There is no way to program a machine to understand the culture. Different cultures in the world have several lexical items that are unique to that specific culture. Machines do not have the complexity to understand or recognize slang, idioms, and names. This is one challenge that machines have never been able to overcome. It will be extremely difficult for them to do so as well. While this is a significant challenge to machines, native in-country speakers who are well-versed in their languages and understand the idioms and slang that the culture has to offer are skilled enough to find appropriate equivalents in the target languages.
An exceptionally professional translator is not just a bilingual or a linguist. He/she has all of the necessary characteristics and skills needed to translate, alongside a thorough understanding of the cultural differences that go with the language. Typically, the translators are native speakers of the language. They translate your text to; therefore, they have a comprehensive knowledge of all the cultural differences as well and will bear those in mind when translating.
2. Machines cannot relate words to the context
There are words with dual meanings in the different languages, which can be a significant problem for machine translators. These words have to be translated according to their context to help determine their true meanings. Only customized translations can do this. It becomes tricky for the machine translator since it cannot relate the word to the context. At the same time, the machine cannot give both meanings in one text. On the other hand, it is easy for the human translator to identify the correct meaning by instantly matching the word to the content. If you run a document with such dual-meaning words through a machine translator, it will lead to inaccurate translations, which disrupt the flow of the text. The document will end up being confusing, and most of the sentences will lack logical meaning.
3. It is difficult to localize machines for several languages
New phrases continue to develop in any language, depending on the dialect. Machine translators are unable to pick up on these evolution in the languages as fast as human translators who are experts on localization and different dialects of their specialist language. The machine will have to be up to date by constantly updating new phrases based on how often words in new contexts or new words come up in a conversation until they can find a suitable translation.
This means that the machine translator will have to be continuously programmed. As a result of the sophisticated algorithms that these programs are made up of, this will take time and effort to achieve. On the other hand, a human translator can pick up on the development in a language quicker than the machine.
4. Machines cannot replicate style and tone
Every document that is written has a different style as well as tone. A document can have a poetic, funny, or persuasive style and tone, and when it comes to translation, machines cannot replicate that. The document is meant to have that specific tone and style for it to be understood by the reader. Only customized translation can be able to recreate something similar to the style and tone of that document. The machine translator will lose the intended tone and intricate nuances of the original document and produce something that is quite flat.
Specific types of texts such as poetry and argumentative essays, in particular, pose an even bigger challenge for machine translators. They are unable to capture the mood of the text accurately, and hence, the result is a flat translation.
5. A translation is incomplete without the human touch
After the machine churns out a translation, there have to be copy editors and proofreaders to ensure that the piece of translation is grammatically correct and comprehensible. The customized translation will, thus, put in the finishing touches to the piece while localizing and enhancing it for the target audience. The complexity of any language is something that only humans can fully understand.
Machine translators have come a long way in a very short period, but they still lack in certain aspects. These are the aspects that make a translation effective for day-to-day and business use, and this is where customized translation beats machine translation.
