Translation and Artificial Intelligence

Though AI, and technology in general, have made several significant incursions into this field, and though some may think that robot translators’ replacing human translators is just over the horizon, serious studies, market projections, and the translator’s daily experience present a different picture. A qualified human translator will always be necessary (or at least will continue to be into the foreseeable future) to ensure an accurate, smooth, and as perfect as possible translation. After all, think of the seriousness of the kinds of documents that get handled by professional translators – financial literature (statements, quarterly reports, important tax information); legal matters (contracts, patents, summons, judgments, injunctions, probation conditions, warrants); medical matters (prescriptions, information sheets, clinical studies, diagnoses); technical and chemical texts (material and chemical safety data sheets, operations manuals for heavy machinery, hazardous-material charts and checklists) – none of these can be entrusted to a computer alone. See for yourself: ask any surgeon if a robot can replace him or her, and they will tell you the same thing: the machinery can greatly help me in my work, but I don’t see how it could possibly replace me. Though an autopilot can take off and land an airplane possibly better than a human can, I don't think we'll be seeing upwards of two hundred people getting into a plane that will fly them for eight hours from one place to another, without a human behind the controls.

You might say: “Yes, but you need a human being behind the controls of a plane, because a malfunction means people will die; you need a surgeon present, because otherwise the patient can die.” True, and although a mistranslation may not lead directly to someone dying (even this is debatable, for example in medical situations), incorrect translations – especially in the fields just mentioned – can imply financial loss, serious legal consequences, someone getting hurt, and no less important to many, just a lot of time wasted.

To cut corners with respect to translation, out of a desire to save time or money, can be far costlier in time and money later down the road. Don’t entrust your complex accounting to an amateur, even if you save money in the short term; don’t entrust your legal issues to a law student; in like manner, don’t entrust your translations to non-professionals or to computers alone.

Unless, of course, you are dealing with non-sensitive matters, are okay with just getting the gist, or are merely curious. I sometimes use Google Translate to read news in languages I don’t understand. I know the computer will make plenty of mistakes and produce sometimes awkward-sounding texts, but I don’t care. I am merely trying to get a quick idea of what is going on halfway around the world. And I know already I’m going to get a very incomplete picture, and that’s okay.

Translators and interpreters are human beings, and since to err is human, we are not infallible. Nor is your lawyer, doctor, or tax specialist, but you still entrust your concerns to them, because you expect them to be smarter than the average bear in what regards their specialty. Translators and interpreters are no different. And like other professionals, we too use tools and technology to help us in our work, and we are not worried about being replaced by these tools.

This translator is not daunted nor intimidated by the hype surrounding AI. In fact, I am excited about AI and all the benefits it can bring to my daily work. (I also wrote a blog article about the same topic.)

Count on me to produce an accurate and smooth translation that a native speaker of your target language will understand as though he or she were looking at it in the original language.