Human translation is a better investment
than machine translation. Here are three reasons.
First,
Humans make errors and mistakes in speaking
and writing. We predict and understand the proper meaning from the context. To get satisfactory results from computer translation, we need to put all the possible variables into the computer memory. I don’t think that’s possible because even humans cannot predict all
the errors and mistakes. Even humans put a lot of memories into a translation
program, it is hard for the program to deliver perfect meanings into different language.
Human need to do final review and modification of the results from the program.
Second,
Some words have multiple meanings. We
recognize them from the context but sometimes computer suggests improper results. For an experiment, I put a sentence ‘He caught a fish at the bank’
into the Google Translator and converted it into Korean. As you may know, the
bank in this sentence means a ‘dike’
not a financial institution, and the program failed to deliver the right
meaning even though it already has information on every single word in this sentence.
Third,
Speaking and writing can be said as creative
processes. To select right words for translation, the one translating source texts
should understand human emotions and sometimes knowledge of human history or cultural understanding is required. Let’s say we translate a sentence delivering
typical and cultural mood into the other language of which cultural background is
totally different. We can make footnotes or express it in different way agreeable to
the culture of the target language while a computer is doing word-for-word
translation.
Therefore, spending money on human translators
is a better investment than computer translators.
