There is no way to ignore the development of machines and technology, regardless of what sector of the economy or society you are in. We live in the golden era of technological transformation in which every new day brings new technological innovation and improvement.
Although we have witnessed the rise of many new technological marvels in the past few years, a couple of those have turned out to be revolutionary for human civilization. Some of these technical solutions are AI and machine learning. They have changed how many industries work, and the translation industry is no exception to this trend.
Nowadays, there are many translation companies out there that are using a mix of AI and machine learning and professional translators. But many people are doubtful about the future of professional translators since they think the new technological innovations will completely replace humans from the translation industry, but that’s not true.
This blog post will examine why technological innovation will never replace humans in the translation industry.
Universal Machine Translation Is Almost Impossible
Companies or technological solutions must be more capable of building a global machine translation system because this requires massive technological advancement and improvement. Such improvement is not possible in the next 20-30 years. There are more than 7000 languages in the world. Although a few hundred big ones have been covered by machine learning translation, there is still a long way to go and many challenges to overcome.
Currently, we are only partially dependent upon machines to translate a document from English to Spanish; how can we expect those machines to deal with a global translation system?
Apart from programming the current system with different grammatical structures, there is also a need to program it for the vocabulary and laws of every language. All this makes the role of professional translators critical for businesses.
Language Evolution
Even though the language is constantly evolving and never remains static, the human brain can effectively translate documents from English to Spanish. The main problem for machines will be the evolving grammar of every language.
Words that were not even a part of a language have now become a new normal, and this is where machines become ineffective. For instance, writing with “don’t” rather than “do not” is not taught to English pupils. Although both words are accurate, they don’t match the situation or communication style more effectively than “do not.”
Again, this is one area where humans will always excel, and even the best machine available doesn’t come closer to the human brain when it comes to honing skills according to the evolution of a language.
Software Updates
It is evident that even though there are companies and people out there who can build 100% accurate and precise machine translation systems, the success of even the most perfect machine translation will depend on how frequently it is being updated. This task will become manageable and attainable with a team of skilled and experienced programmers, experts, and professionals.
Even a perfect team will have to work for their entire life on updating the software with grammar rules, implementation guidelines, and language laws and translating all the documents from one language to another. This is why most translation companies still depend on professional translators for document translation services.
The Lack of Human Versatility
Machine translation of technical manuals is mainly successful due to the ordered logic that can be easily programmed in such instructions. However, while many who offer document translation services consider fluency a criterion, language has no formal stated criteria. Language becomes meaningless without a personal touch, and even the most advanced technological marvels lack this touch.
Even a single word can have multiple meanings when used for different kinds of emotions, and in most cases, machines lack this versatility. Not even a single translation company can entirely depend on machines for official document translation.
No Knowledge of History
Any machine translation program must be programmed with the most current usage and definitions of the target language to function correctly. The complete history and use of the word must be taught to the machine. The machine will also need to understand the era and age of the text’s sources. This is necessary to offer 100% accurate official document translation.
Wrapping Up!
No one can deny the rise of machines and their contribution to all industries, but there is no way the current technological evolutions can completely replace human translators; even if they do, it will take another 100-150 years.
