In recent years, many companies have decided to use machine translation for their various publications instead of hiring a specialist translator for this task. However, despite their obvious advantages, it is important to remember that machine translators are still in their infancy. They are not nearly as good as if the work were done by a qualified translator. They simply do not yet have that extra touch that makes the work of professional translators unique, reader-friendly, and versatile. But of course, there are many other reasons why it is still preferable today to entrust translations to a professional translator as opposed to various, even AI-based, software.
There is a linguistic challenge in translation that is difficult to solve, even for a professional translator
Language is one of the most complex communication systems in the world, and it allows people to understand each other. But we often misunderstand each other even when speaking the same language, because many times we use ambiguous or homonymic words in our conversations. Such words can cast a whole sentence in a different light. For example, the word “mouse” can mean both a computer device and an animal. Thus, the applicable meaning of that word can only be determined by the context, as that is what makes it clear what we meant.
It may sound surprising, but even the most famous myths and epics are full of such errors, which were caused solely by the translators’ lack of background knowledge. Let’s look at an example of this:
The Greek soldiers of the Iliad did not lay siege to Troy in a wooden horse. The translation error was the result of the expert not knowing that the meaning of the Greek word “uppos” is not just a horse in Hungarian, but also a large ship with a bow carved into the shape of a horse’s head. This is a very serious mistake. However, let’s consider this: if even those people, who translate the most influential works in history, can make such blunders – even with all the linguistic and lexical knowledge at their disposal – how could we expect a similarly professional work from an artificial intelligence-based software? Which is nothing else, but a predefined algorithm and a dictionary fed into it…
Of course, this is just one of the many reasons why it makes sense to hire a qualified translator, instead of, or in addition to, entrusting the entire task to a software program.
Why is it not practical to use only an AI software tool for translation?
For one, they do not take cultural differences into account, which a professional translator will certainly pay attention to.
Culture may vary from country to country, and sometimes it is different even within countries. Human translators are aware of these differences and can take them into account when translating.
Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, cannot do the same, which can make the finished product sound weird or downright misinterpreted.
Softwares do not have sufficient professional knowledge and experience compared to a qualified translator
Business jargons are difficult to understand, even for the average person. It’s no wonder that an algorithm can’t handle them either, especially when its database doesn’t even have similar, synonymous terms.
It cannot express itself in a catchy and stylish way
It is often up to the professionals to make a text, which is dry and boring in the first place, interesting and exciting. This can be a daunting task even for experienced translators. They need to find clever expressions that add colour but don’t change the context of the original text.
Moreover, while human translations make it possible to use:
- more complex metaphors,
- collocations,
- wordplays,
- and even humor,
artificial intelligence can only provide the literal meaning of terms and is unable to use language at a metacommunicative level.
Of course, as time goes on, more and more intelligent softwares – such as Chat GPT, for example – will be developed, and those will be capable of handling the above to some extent. But even so, it’s still worth hiring experts for translation work, because not only are AI-based texts sometimes worded
