{"id":13027,"date":"2019-12-23T10:21:27","date_gmt":"2019-12-23T10:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moduslanguageservices.com\/2019\/12\/what-is-machine-translation\/"},"modified":"2019-12-23T10:21:27","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T10:21:27","slug":"what-is-machine-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moduslanguageservices.com\/th\/2019\/12\/what-is-machine-translation\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Machine Translation?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is Machine Translation?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The term Machine Translation (MT) refers to\nthe process of using computer software to provide automated translation from\none language to another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The history of MT dates to July 1949 when\nresearchers at the Rockefeller Foundation put forward a proposal based on\ninformation theory the successes of code-breaking during the Second World War\nand fueled by Cold War fears. Claims were made that computers would replace\nhuman translations within five years. But solving the automated language\ntranslation challenge was a more significant challenge that was understood at\nthe time\u2026 and many still believe this today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest technologies represent a sizable\nstep forward in translation quality and fluency. They can solve a vast number\nof translation challenges and increase the productivity of translations while\nmaking available in different languages large documents that previously could\nnot be translated because of the cost involved and the time required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can Machine Translation be used?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Machine Translation is a powerful tool that\nhas many purposes and can be used in several different ways:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n\u2022 Fast translation to get the gist of the content<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n\u2022 Increase the productivity of human translators by providing a first\npass translation that can be quickly edited to human translation quality <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n\u2022 Instant translation of content such as chat, email or customer support\ncommunications<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n\u2022 Translating large volumes of data which would take too much time or\nwould be too expensive to be translated by using a human only approach<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     \nand many more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, despite all the breakthroughs,\nmachine translation is still lacking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most obvious scenario is its complete\ninefficiency in translating literary texts. It may understand the syntagmatic\nrelationships between the sentences, but (for now) it cannot understand the\nsubtle nuances between synonyms, how a metaphor or metonymy, humour, etc., are\nstructured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, because it is not able to\ninterpret text, machine translation engines do not work with texts poorly\nwritten. If the writing of a document is poor, ambiguous or has spelling\nmistakes, the MT cannot do too much about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will Machine Translation ever replace\nTranslators?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, yes, they can. But only when\ntranslation involves a lot of simple, repetitive language, and standard terms.\nWe will see a shift from computer-assisted machine translation to\nhuman-assisted machine translation in many areas of the industry, but the human\ntouch will always be needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes the meaning of a single word can\nonly be understood through the context. It might be explained in the next\nparagraph, in several sentences scattered across the text or even in another\ndocument used as a reference. Machines cannot see the connection between such\nwords and the entire text, at least now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, some kinds of translation will always\nneed to have a human in charge of them! Think of those texts were high quality\nis paramount, or those that are sensitive. What about texts involving\nconfidential information? And those were errors might be life-threatening? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, certain areas of the translation industry, such as transcreation, literary translation, multimedia material, will always be predominantly human-centerd. This is so because they require creativity and inventiveness!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The complexity of any language is something\nonly humans can fully understand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is Machine Tran […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[269],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-th"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":false,"author_link":"https:\/\/www.moduslanguageservices.com\/th\/author\/karanatmodus\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"What is Machine Tran […]","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moduslanguageservices.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moduslanguageservices.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moduslanguageservices.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moduslanguageservices.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moduslanguageservices.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.moduslanguageservices.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moduslanguageservices.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moduslanguageservices.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moduslanguageservices.com\/th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}