“Machine Translation” is a Misnomer
An ickle rant ensues.
The public doesn’t understand how machine translation works. And generally speaking, the public doesn’t understand that machine translation couldn’t exist without human translators in the loop.
In other words, it’s not really “machines” that are “doing” the translating, it’s people. The machines are simply programmed to imitate the translations the people do.
I think this is symptomatic of a widespread disease in the computer world: an obsession with cutting people out of the loop.
It’s the same tunnel vision that motivated the much (and rightly) criticized footer that graced Google News at its launch:
This page was generated entirely by computer algorithms without human editors.
No humans were harmed or even used in the creation of this page.
Admittedly, this quote has long since been removed, and it was probably only meant as a joke in the first place anyway. But this problematic attitude still underlies a lot of reactions to Machine Translation. In general, people don’t realize that it wouldn’t be possible without human translators.
Yes, the title is pretty much a joke. I do visit reality once in a while.
Of course if Google, Babel et altri have to rely on what passes for language that’s posted on teh Intarwebs to “learn” human languages and produce translations, I am not very mucho surprised by the low quality and the weird stuff one can stumble upon sometimes…
But that has nothing to do with the MT. Or rather, the MT learns to translate what it’s fed.
In my experience, Google’s MT is quite good at translating Wikipedia content. This is probably because Google’s MT was trained on Wikipedia content. Wikipedia only constitutes “comparable” as opposed to well-aligned translations, and only partial translations at that, but where else could they have gotten sufficient amounts of parallel text to train Hindi, Tamil, etc, systems?
You’re right, there are a lot of misconceptions about machine translation. I opine in my post on the topic that because news about MT filters out to the general public more frequently than news about human translation, client education becomes all the more difficult. Many outside the translation industry believe computers are doing all translation now.
Glenn’s comment is spot on. Clients do not necessarily understand the work a human translator does nor do they want to. They are looking for a hassle-free, quick and inexpensive solution to their problem. The onus is on us to educate them and establish a trusting and collaborative relationship with them. That’s something machines still can’t do!
i have an experience with using machine sranslation while giving a speech, actually i feel like my audience doesn’t fully convinced as the voice and the tune are pretty different.
Hi there, I work for a large UK translations company. There are a few points to make regarding automated translation systems such as those found online. Software can be used for translation projects, but I would advise against it if what you’re translating is intended ultimately for publication. There are often so many cultural nuances to take into consideration that cutting corners by using translation software can render your message practically impossible to understand for your target audience. And beyond popular European languages like Spanish (that being 2nd only to English and 4th overall in the world), you run the risk of dramatic misinterpretation. Often the only way to go is to utilise the services of a professional translator. Anyway, great blog though; keep it up. Good to have these things discussed so that people get the facts rather than being left to speculate and not get the results that they want.