| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | No need for human translation? Thread poster: Michele Fauble
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Michele Fauble 
United States
Local time: 10:45
Member (2006)
Norwegian to English
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Claire Berlinski is seriously misinformed.
“In 2019, the Annals of Internal Medicine published a study pronouncing Google Translate so accurate that it could be used to translate the results of medical trials — a task where an error could have deadly consequences. Professional translators hate it. Of course they do: It’s putting them out of work. They’re prone to writing articles insisting that Google doesn’t translate properly. It’s true that for literary nuance, you wa... See more Claire Berlinski is seriously misinformed.
“In 2019, the Annals of Internal Medicine published a study pronouncing Google Translate so accurate that it could be used to translate the results of medical trials — a task where an error could have deadly consequences. Professional translators hate it. Of course they do: It’s putting them out of work. They’re prone to writing articles insisting that Google doesn’t translate properly. It’s true that for literary nuance, you want a human translator. But for everyday translation — in medicine, in courts, in diplomacy, even — Google Translate often does the job as well as a professional and does it faster, for free. Most participants in translation Turing tests are unable to distinguish its translations from a human’s.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/03/europe-putin-ukraine-google-translate-00079301
[Edited at 2023-02-04 18:38 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:45
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| I'm pretty sure I make more than the average journalist... | Feb 4, 2023 |
Michele Fauble wrote:
Claire Berlinski is seriously misinformed.
...and the bonus is that I don't have to write partisan and poorly researched articles to earn my daily bread.
Human translation is alive and well, provided that you write like a human in a field where high quality is required, rather than working in an area where accuracy is a "nice to have". I suspect that translation as a profession is also more trusted than the media, in which public trust is at record lows (for good reasons).
That notwithstanding, I for one am happy to put up my hand and say that Google Translate (and its ilk - it's telling that she never mentions things like DeepL) are extremely useful. Would you use it to translate important material if you had a choice? No, as many of us know and understand. It doesn't mean it's not a great communication tool for the citizens of Ukraine and others who don't need or can't afford high-level human translation.
Regards,
Dan
| | | | CARL HARRIS
United States
Local time: 12:45
Member (2013)
English to French
+ ...
| Claire Berlinski is seriously misinformed. | Feb 4, 2023 |
Google Translate software-design engineers are doing excellent work finding ways to mimic human language translators. And yet the system cannot translate correctly in cases where technicality is required; it is a system of sophisticated computer programs called Algorithms, layered for branching through several databases to retrieve solutions.
Therefore, when the solution to a query isn’t detected, the system provides the closest. Thus, not a substitute for cases in which professio... See more Google Translate software-design engineers are doing excellent work finding ways to mimic human language translators. And yet the system cannot translate correctly in cases where technicality is required; it is a system of sophisticated computer programs called Algorithms, layered for branching through several databases to retrieve solutions.
Therefore, when the solution to a query isn’t detected, the system provides the closest. Thus, not a substitute for cases in which professionals are reliable.
Meanwhile, software-design engineers keep adding more layers of Algorithms. Thus, one always requires faster computer chips and additional storage spaces to accommodate them. ▲ Collapse
| | | | finnword1
United States
Local time: 13:45
English to Finnish
+ ...
I am mostly translating patent applications. Those must be translated literally, no matter how clumsy and poor writing they contain. MT programs tend to correct the style and that is unacceptable.
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| Machine translation is fine ... | Feb 5, 2023 |
... until it isn't.
I and others have pointed this out before. I use MT as a tool and part of my contribution as a human translator is to identify the points where it isn't fine and fix them.
How many times will we have to have this debate?
| | | | Baran Keki
Türkiye
Local time: 20:45
Member
English to Turkish
| Not so off the mark I dare say | Feb 5, 2023 |
Michele Fauble wrote:
“In 2019, the Annals of Internal Medicine published a study pronouncing Google Translate so accurate that it could be used to translate the results of medical trials — a task where an error could have deadly consequences.
Based on my experience with one particular clinical trials agency (in my language pair obviously), I can safely say that MT produces better translation output than some of the translators there.
I mean, no MT engine would translate a sentence that says "If you have a COPD exacerbation" as "If you own/possess a COPD exacerbation" in the target language, but an incompetent, word-for-word translating human translator can and they do.
Philip Lees wrote:
How many times will we have to have this debate?
Indeed. When are we going to see more ChatGPT topics/dialogs, which is apparently all the craze right now?
| | | | | Don't think this happened in 2019 | Feb 5, 2023 |
But I think it is happening. It's a on-going process. I expect they will replace human translators within our lifetime.
Before you argue, just pause for a moment to reflect how poor in quality the majority, if not all, of the human translations are and how they managed to survive all these years with that poor quality without ever making any improvement.
But machine is making improvement all the time.
It has already replaced humans and taken over the lower ... See more But I think it is happening. It's a on-going process. I expect they will replace human translators within our lifetime.
Before you argue, just pause for a moment to reflect how poor in quality the majority, if not all, of the human translations are and how they managed to survive all these years with that poor quality without ever making any improvement.
But machine is making improvement all the time.
It has already replaced humans and taken over the lower end of the market, depriving young human translators of the opportunities necessary for them to practice and grow from the bottom up. For any industry, if there is no room for new people to learn, to make mistakes, and to grow, the industry as an industry is dead.
[Edited at 2023-02-05 08:05 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | TIP translation | Feb 5, 2023 |
Philip Lees wrote:
How many times will we have to have this debate?
It will rumble on forever. The better MT gets, the more people will argue we are redundant, and the harder it will get to argue we aren’t.
Translation as such is almost dead anyway. It seems most translators are now just doing QA. Not only the MTPE bottom feeders but also the professionals turning to MT as a tool.
Working like that doesn’t involve any actual translation so shouldn’t really be called translation. It’s bilingual copyediting.
Doing it would be like returning to being a checker, as it was called at the beginning of my career, and how I hated that.
I signed up to be a translator, not a checker. Luckily I should just about survive until retirement.
It’s frankly depressing seeing how the majority of pros here have switched to being advocates of the technology that is killing the profession.
My profession is rapidly dying and the replacement is not for me.
Now that’s an uplifting start to a Sunday morning.
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Michele Fauble
United States
Local time: 10:45
Member (2006)
Norwegian to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | No debate intended | Feb 5, 2023 |
Philip Lees wrote:
How many times will we have to have this debate?
Articles like the one I referenced, and from which the quote is taken, are misleading the public to believe that human translators are no longer needed.
| | | | | Clients never learn | Feb 5, 2023 |
Michele Fauble wrote:
misleading the public to believe that human translators are no longer needed.
Those of us who see ourselves as professionals providing quality translation have always had this battle to fight to convince clients that they really need us.
In the old days we were pissed by clients who hired high school students who 'had learned the foreign language in school' to translate their materials instead of coming to us;
and then we were pissed by clients who hire cheap translators to handle their materials instead of paying a decent price and come to us;
and now we are pissed by clients who use machine translations instead of using us humans.
Clients never learn.
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 19:45
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
Philip Lees wrote:
... until it isn't.
I and others have pointed this out before. I use MT as a tool and part of my contribution as a human translator is to identify the points where it isn't fine and fix them.
How many times will we have to have this debate?
Yes, they know what your part is. They just don’t want to pay for it or want it paid with peanuts.
We’ll be debating this as many time as it’s needed, from different angles.
| | | | Baran Keki
Türkiye
Local time: 20:45
Member
English to Turkish
| Peanuts, chapatis, caviar... | Feb 5, 2023 |
Lingua 5B wrote:
Yes, they know what your part is. They just don’t want to pay for it or want it paid with peanuts.
We’ll be debating this as many time as it’s needed, from different angles.
Are you referring PMTE jobs? Agreed, the translator's role is pretty much defined there and the agency wants to save costs. But, surely there must be others who provide human translations at a decent rate.
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| Progressive decay | Feb 6, 2023 |
Ice Scream wrote:
It’s frankly depressing seeing how the majority of pros here have switched to being advocates of the technology that is killing the profession.
I reckon the rot started with the introduction of the computer. Real translators work either by writing freehand or, if they absolutely have to, using a typewriter. I mean a manual typewriter, of course - none of that fancy electronic stuff. And real translators use real correction fluid, as nature intended.
But suddenly we had word processors, which put the correction fluid manufacturers out of business. And as if Volkswriter wasn't bad enough, then we got the next generation of WYSIWIG software, so you could actually see what your target text was going to look like when it was printed. And they had SPELL CHECKERS!!! Any real translator would understand that innovations of that kind would inevitably destroy the profession by making it too easy for amateurs to produce professional-looking output.
But that wasn't the end of it. Another decade on and we got the internet and the world wide web. That really finished off our profession, as you didn't need expensive paper dictionaries any more, and you could do all your research without trudging through waist-deep snow to your local library, only to find it was shut. Real translators would never use a web search and would scoff at Wikipedia.
Now we have artificial intelligence (not really intelligent) and machine translation. Well, that is certain to sound the death knell for the translation profession. Real translators would never have anything to do with MT.
When you think about it, it's a miracle any of us are still getting work.
| | | | Nikolay Novitskiy
Russian Federation
Local time: 22:45
Member (2018)
English to Russian
| MT translation is dull | Feb 6, 2023 |
Will you trust a machine to translate the Sunless Sea video game? I don't think so.
It's not cool graphics, but high quality writing, vibrant language and unforgettable atmosphere which made it so popular. Developed in 2015, the game still has a loyal fanbase. No ChatGPT, neither DeepL can translate it and keep its charm.
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Philip Lees wrote:
I reckon the rot started with the introduction of the computer. Real translators…
😂😂
Except all those are manual tools and did not replace brainwork, and they were never going to replace any of us.
It seems bizarre to me that anyone would want to start every job by unpicking someone else’s translation rather than creating their own. If that makes me a dinosaur, so be it!
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