After so much talk of machine translation, we’d like to remind our readers why human translation will always prevail in terms of accuracy and completeness.
Here are five reasons why machine translations will never replace human translators:
1. Machines cannot understand culture: The intricacies of a country’s culture reflects on their language, and such nuances can only really be understood by humans.
2. Machines can’t relate words to context: With many words and characters having different meanings, machines struggle to decipher vague phrases like «tears on his shirt», which could mean one of two very different things, for example.
3. It is difficult to localize machines for different languages: As dialects evolve quickly and meanings change within a language’s culture, machines would have to be kept up to date constantly with small changes to achieve accuracy.
4. Machines cannot replicate style and tone: With potentially layers of depth to a text, having puns or wordplay, a utilitarian machine will seek to emulate none of this.
5. A translation cannot be complete without the human touch: In terms of raw processing power, machines dominate humans, no question. But humans see the world through the lens of language, it is so intrinsic to our thought process that we are the only true masters of language.
