Why Will Humans Always Triumph Over Machine Translation?

Posted By Singapore Translators | Publised At 18/12/2020
Last Modified: 16th Oct 2023

We are living in an era in which machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other innovations are replacing people at work. The language industry is no exception. In reality, some of the greatest driving forces behind the advancement of such technologies are automatic translation services and machine translation. In this article, we are going to talk about human translation and machine translation. So let’s begin:

Machine Translation Engines Will Hardly Ever Replace Human Translators

IMPORTANCE OF HUMAN TRANSLATION

While machine translation powered by AI is here, companies still need human translators to achieve their business goals worldwide. Machine translation is not in a situation to defeat human translators at this stage. Only humans can perceive the meaning of a language. Human translators can also understand the context of the source material.

Online machine translation and free translation tools can help individuals translate short phrases and words. Basically, machine translation is used for informal translation. But when you need translation for official communication, human translators are essential.

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Human Translation vs Machine Translation

Machine translation:

Bulk translation: When you have to do the bulk translation, machine translation seems to be ideal. It is a fast translation.

Internal resources: Machine translation can be used when you are translating an internal resource. It also depends on if you want 100% correct content or some errors are manageable. However, if customers are going to see it, then you should not use machine translation.

It is fast: Machine translation is fast. Thus, you can use it in situations when you want faster results. The reason for the same is that it does word-to-word translation. 

It is free:  For businesses with restricted budgets, the free existence of machine translation is the main appeal. There is a variety of free online machine translation applications available, with the most common being Google Translate. But you can find many other free alternatives through research.

Constantly improving:  Machine translation is continuously improving. With advancements in technology, machine translation will eventually follow suit and progress with it. Neural machine translation is one of the best development for translation.

Human Translation

High accuracy: It is important to translate any content that needs high levels of accuracy professionally. This involves several things as legal records online or something else that cannot be misinterpreted. It’s often safer to invest in a human translation of this kind of content than to risk serious errors by using a machine.

Review and quality procedures: The use of human document translation services ensures that once the initial translation has been completed, analysis and consistency processes can be put in place. The translator will verify their work to ensure that it follows any quality requirements agreed upon. You can make alterations if there are parts of the translation that you don’t like.  What you see is what you get with a machine translation, and you need to do all the reviews yourself. This can be time-consuming as well as laborious.

Provides context and tone of voice: A human translator can retain the original meaning of your content rather than only translating words. It also adds a tone of voice that would otherwise be lacking. From there, they will provide the translated version with meaning and significance. A machine has no such potential.

COSTS AND BENEFITS OF HUMAN TRANSLATION VS MACHINE TRANSLATION

Speed of delivery

Computer-driven translation software is frequently advertised in a way that demonstrates the delivery speed, asserting that it would take no longer to complete human translations. There is the truth behind the claim, but it is greatly misunderstood by the degree of the time requirement. 

Online human translation systems that are easy to use have significantly reduced the processing time from the placement of an order to the completion of a translation.

Besides, the margin of error is so much lower that it saves the client time spent on corrections. Time, but not at the cost of consistency, is valuable.

Cost of translation

Many conclude that free Google translations or other free services would have to be sufficient because human translations are too costly. But people who study this can easily understand this.

Online translation platforms have lowered costs and upfront expenses dramatically, enabling skilled translators to charge much less for the same high-quality product. 

Certified translations

When submitting translated documents for official purposes, certified translations are usually needed. A stamp of approval is issued by a certified translation service and a declaration declaring that the document is a valid and correct translation of the original. There is no potential for computer translations to certify translations.

Conclusion

It would not be right to say that machine translation would never be able to do what human immigration document translation services can do. But we can surely say that day is far in the future if it ever happens. Human translation arguments vs. machine translation arguments are still in consideration of humans.

Today, machines can not create a detailed translation like a real-life person who can understand the culture like Chinese translation services in Singapore, sound, variations of speech, and more. Presently, there is no better alternative to the human translator.  

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