Think about online tools such as GoogleTranslate or SpanishDict. Think about the instant gratification they give you and the way they facilitate immediate conversations, instantly breaking down language barriers within seconds. However, also think about the translations they offer you, which are sometimes overly-literal, incorrect and often a little stilted. You are now thinking of Machine Translation.
Machine Translation (MT) is, essentially, translation carried out by a computer, which collects hundreds of millions of data each second and stores it in its memory. While this proves to be useful for many people all over the world, and is significantly increasing in demand and popularity due to its immediate nature, this type of translation often can contain small yet significant mistakes due to its unnatural origins.
Machine Translation is affecting human translation more and more. Principally, the main difference between Machine and Human translation is that Machine Translation is much more instantaneous. Coming with this instantaneousness however is an increase in the amount of errors contained in the translation. These errors can manifest themselves in many formats.
For example, when words have multiple meanings (e.g. “contar” in Spanish can mean “to narrate”, “to count”, or “to have”), a computer cannot interpret context like a human can, as it is automatic and serves the user at a rapid speed without considering the rest of the text or the text as a whole. If the wrong meaning is selected by the Machine Translator it can significantly impact the meaning of the sentence and therefore can make the translated phrase either right or, often, very wrong. Also, a computer cannot interpret style of a text and can therefore not select appropriate vocabulary according to register and audience of a text. Therefore, Machine Translation often does not choose the correct equivalent word in the translated text.
A computer often sounds overly-literal and although Machine Translators are often correct for isolated words only, with entire phrases, idioms, or paragraphs, they often tend to produce phrases that sound slightly stale and unnatural.
This is where Machine Translation Quality Evaluation comes in, a new job opportunity role created by Machine Translation and one which is now offered to human translators. Machine Translation Quality Evaluation is the quality examination and editing by native speakers of text which has been prior translated by a machine.
And this is where BBLTRANSLATION can help you. We are a first-class polyglot agency, specialising in high-quality translations. Our qualified translators at BBLTRANSLATION are all native speakers and will fix any mistakes in Machine Translation in order to offer you a natural, fluent and correct translation whilst ensuring that they produce the best version of the translation that is possible. In this modern world we are dominated by machines, so if your business needs a human touch, do not hesitate to ask for our advice – at BBLTRANSLATION with Machine Translation Quality Evaluation, we guarantee you a better international image.
