Comments on: Machine Translation vs. Human Translation: Will Artificial Intelligence Replace the World’s Second Oldest Profession?

By: Mia

Mia — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 10:45:20 +0000

Thanks for this excellent article. I wonder if you also have a German version available?

By: Garrett Kleinhesselink

Garrett Kleinhesselink — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 03:51:23 +0000

There is a fundamental weakness I find that’s not touched upon here. Microsoft translator cannot detect the difference between a spoken statement and a question in Spanish. Google translate is little better, both are in fact unworkable as translators. I cannot imagine how this can work with AI. A statement framed as a question, “Do I regret it?” in English has the word do, in Spanish it’s only inflection and just that example right there between I regret it and do I regret it?
If Microsoft translator cannot detect a rhetorical question in Spanish among 16 native speakers, what? AI is only going to work in English

By: amalia rodriguez monroy

amalia rodriguez monroy — Wed, 24 May 2023 22:43:33 +0000

Thank you, Jost, for this nice text. We are now giving the machine our words and synthax. They will only copy them. Readers and clients will have to put up with the results. soon no one will be capable of telling the difference!

By: Bruce D. Popp

Bruce D. Popp — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 00:35:07 +0000

Consistency is a document level property.

As long as MT is trained on a corpus sentence by sentence and as long as MT translates segment by segment, consistency will be a serious problem.

By: Adriana Tortoriello

Adriana Tortoriello — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 08:13:05 +0000

Fabulous piece, so clear and to the point. Ought to be shared far and wide.

By: Adjo Agboossoumonde

Adjo Agboossoumonde — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 21:41:28 +0000

Thank you for this timely article, Jost! I love how you pointed out the unique skill set of the human translator ( and by extension, Interpreter). Excellent article

By: Juliet Margaret Macan

Juliet Margaret Macan — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 20:36:34 +0000

Spot on Jost!
Unfortunately, another big problem for MT / NMT is the source text which has seriously deteriorated in recent decades, since non-native English technical writers have taken to writing in English as the pivot for translation into multiple target languages.

By: Bettina Behrendt

Bettina Behrendt — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 12:53:52 +0000

Thank you for this article. However, I would mention copyright issues as well. This is indeed tricky, because copyright law varies in different jurisdictions.

Using free apps to translate texts even if their content would not require confidential treatment might infringe copyrights if the texts’ author(s) have not given their prior approval that such texts are 1) translated AND b) used as training data. And this may apply even where the machine-generated translation is not published.

The same might apply where translations are used as training data without the translator’s prior approval (and I think translators should charge an extra licence fee for this type of use besides their regular translation fee.

By: Dominik Macháček

Dominik Macháček — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 10:24:06 +0000

Thanks for a nice article. I’m involved in MT research, and I think that 4. consistency and 5. security issues are being resolved, or will be very soon. How it will be integrated to Google Translate is not a topic for AI or research, but business or politics.

By: Robert Sette

Robert Sette — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 23:07:01 +0000

Outstanding article, Jost!

By: Tess Whitty

Tess Whitty — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 14:31:10 +0000

Excellent explanations Jost!

By: Michael Schubert

Michael Schubert — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 09:51:43 +0000

Fantastic article, Jost! So much gold in here. I’d like to add a couple of thoughts:
– #1 (doesn’t know what it’s doing) and #4 (doesn’t care about consistency): It can’t judge when consistent language is mission-critical (technical manual, patent claim) and when it may be undesirable (marketing, literature).
– #3 (creativity): Your comment about trans-cultural shifts is spot on! I would add that MT does not seem to consider linguistic-aesthetic elements like rhythm, cadence, flow, or alliteration that are second nature to good human writers.
– Big picture: I see occasional signs that MT examines surrounding context for clues, but by no means consistently. And it still seems maddeningly imprisoned between periods, stubbornly refusing to combine or split sentences even when the source text cries out for it.
P.S. My favorite sentence in this whole article: “Is what you have to say generic?” That’s an excellent question to put to clients who see MT as something for nothing. It is indeed something for nothing: “when it doesn’t count,” as you write. Mediocre translation of text that doesn’t count is currently the bread and butter of bulk-market agencies, who seem to be most enamored (or afraid) of this technology. In my experience, bringing MT output up to human standards is at least as time-consuming as a purely human translation process and thus still something I would bill up for.