Language Translations & Localization: Human vs. Machine Translate

Before the inception of the Internet, electronic dictionaries, and smartphones, translation and localization were traditionally done by a person sitting in a cave translating Yeh to Yeah so different tribes could understand each other. This was a slow process, and translators had a much more difficult time since they needed to have a massive dictionary all the time for their disposal. Nowadays, thanks to machine translation, one can simply create a Word file, open the tab with an electronic dictionary, and practically without any major issue, translate the text from one language to another. 

Thanks to the development of the Internet and the advent of various electronic dictionaries as well as specialized software for translators, the speed of translation has significantly increased. However, due to modernization, knowledge bases that former translators possessed are rarely used by modern translators. Nowadays, one can simply write an unfamiliar word, and he will have multiple possible meanings and examples at their disposal. 

Of course, many translators still use such kind massive dictionaries, but slowly they are becoming a thing of the past, and modern innovation is becoming a new norm. The knowledge base, which was once the powerhouse of translators, is diminishing because to view a word in an electronic dictionary, one hardly needs to put effort into thinking independently. The word searched from the dictionary is hard to remember properly. 

Another significant downside of manual translation is the speed of its execution. A prerequisite for translators, especially simultaneous interpreters, is the perception speed and delivery of the finished translated document. The higher the translation speed, the more the translator is appreciated. 

Of course, with high speed comes high accuracy. It's not everyone's cup of tea to perceive the targeted language in 1-3 seconds and immediately, almost automatically, competently issue its analogue in the target language. This is the reason behind the rarity of translators who can keep up with the speaker while adhering to the quality of translated texts. 

Neural Machine Translation - Is It the Future?

Neural machine translation is a miracle of technology, a stepping stone in the development of humanity. This type of translation can help when an organization needs to convert a set of documents written in English to a sequence of words to a target language like Spanish or Dutch using deep neural networks. Of course, the quality of such translation is very low, but the document's meaning in most cases can still be grasped. However, what if it's a legal document and the meaning must be precise? This is where the manual translation is needed. 

The primary advantage of neural machine translation and localization is that you will be able to understand the main idea of the text without doing a detailed manual translation that requires mental activity.

Neural machine translation will not soon be able to replace manual translation since it requires artificial technologies, the thinking capability of which should be on a par with manual translation. When AI acquires the same thinking capabilities as humans, then it will be possible to say that machine translation is better than human once.