Get the Gist?

Machine Translation vs. Human Translation

Nowadays, article after article is being written about machine translation, many of them exclaiming over the massive leaps forward in the sector and the strength of new algorithms and AI systems. So is it time to move on past human translators? Is there any point in hiring someone to translate your text when you can just plug it into a machine for free?

Let’s look at a scenario. You find yourself lost in a public building in Germany, and you don’t speak a lick of German. In searching the hallways for an exit, you find a heavy door with a label across the front that reads “Gefahr.” You stand in front of it, wondering. Is “fahr” something to do with distance? Motion? Should you maybe try the door?

In a situation like this, being able to pull out your phone, access a machine translation site, and find out that “Gefahr” means “danger” might be extremely useful. The same could be said of when you are trying to decipher a menu in a different country, or to understand a blurb that a friend has written in a language that you don’t speak on social media. In these moments, you just want to understand the gist of what is being said in the other language, and machine translation can be perfect for that.

If you want the exact details of the message, however, or a translation that is usable in a professional context, then machine translation is ultimately still too young. If you have ever taken full sentences written in a foreign language and run them through machine translation software, you will likely have noticed that the translation you received was somewhat stilted, didn’t entirely make sense, was in the wrong register, and/or seemed to have missed out parts of the original text. This is why pure machine translation is not advisable in situations where a translation needs to properly match the original source text. Unlike their human counterparts, machines are not yet capable of ensuring that the basic standards of good translation are met – that is, that all of the details of the original text are included; the translation is accurate; the original style and register are kept; and the final text does not read like a translation.

We also shouldn’t get too carried away when it comes to trusting machine translation for shorter texts: machines are not yet as capable as human brains when it comes to languages, and they can often misunderstand more complex or more colloquial phrasing. For example, if we type the French question “M’en veux-tu ?” into a machine translation engine, we are given “Do you want me?” as the English translation. This is completely off the mark – a more accurate translation would be “Are you mad at me?” Therefore, if it is important that you understand what has been written in another language, or if you are writing something that others must understand properly, it is still advisable to seek out a living translation professional to be sure that the message being received is actually the right one – and is more than just the gist.