31970399 - human head emerging from an abstract plane in cyberspace. digital illustration.

Don’t Trust AI: Use Humans at a Translation Company

by Chad Richardson

You might have heard that artificial intelligence is improving. Services like Google Translate make it easy to copy and paste text in a box online and get a full translation in a matter of seconds. Unfortunately, these translations have a reputation for being laughably bad.

But new artificial intelligence has some people reconsidering artificial translation. In November 2016, a new, advanced translation service from Google Translate showed improved translation results in 16 different languages. The new results have understandably impressed people around the world.

Whatever progress artificial translation has made, a recent competition between Human and AI translators shows that artificial intelligence still has a ways to go. The competition pitted professional human translators against three AI translation services. In the competition, all of the entrants had 50 minutes to translate literature and non-literature passages from Korean to English. Two professional translators judged the results, not knowing whether human or machines did the translations.

The results did show some promise for the advanced Google Translate, the highest scoring AI software with a score of 28 out of 60. However, the human professional translators defeated them by a landslide, with 49 out of 60 points.

AI translation services might help laypeople quickly get the gist of a document, but the services still have serious limitations. They miss key slang and proper names, and often they miss even basic grammatical tenses in the translated languages. With more sophisticated types of translation, such as technical science terms and legal documents, the problems grow exponentially. For a strong translation, using a professional, human translator remains the only way to get the job done.

Contact us to receive sophisticated, human done professional translation services in a wide variety of languages.

Related Articles

Smart, Fun, and Fascinating Facts About the Use of Sign Language

Also known as ASL (or American Sign Language), this method of communicating with those who are either completely deaf or struggle with their hearing has been around for over two centuries. On the surface, watching those who silently speak, understand, and communicate with others using their hands may appear foreign to most, but it’s actually…

3 Traits for Healthier Meetings and Happier Employees

Have you ever sat in a meeting where you were suddenly jolted out of your daydream when someone asked for your opinion? Maybe you remember that meeting that seemed to drag on with no end in sight. Maybe you don’t remember the meeting at all. Did you ever leave a meeting wondering if you had…

Taking a Break to Manage Unsustainable Accelerated Growth

While growth is the ultimate reason people get into business, sometimes growing or expanding too quickly could lead to some unexpected complications. The challenge for any business owner is not to limit growth but to manage growth and capitalize on it if possible. The effects of unsustainable accelerated growth on your business could include: Having…

here
for you

We’d love to learn more about your translation and localization needs.