Machine translation tools
The translation blogosphere is awash with speculation about the future of Machine Translation (MT) and machine translation tools.
Machines will replace humans. We’ve all heard it. And not just within the realm of translation services. Everywhere!
Our take on MT tools
QuickSilver Translate shares the opinion of many experts in the field, that MT programs have not managed to overcome the difficulties they have faced since the 1950s: they continue to tend towards a simple word-for-word rendering and they often fail to take into account things like word-order or syntax. Internet translation engines are the cutting edge of MT, but even Google Translate, which leads the field, cannot be relied upon to produce anything resembling a decent translation.
Conclusion
The reason that machine translation tools will not deliver what is being promised, is simply that the key to translation is the one thing you cannot teach a computer: culture. Human communication is so elliptical and dependent on circumstance that, until the day in which we finally invent an artificial intelligence which is in every way indistinguishable from a real human brain, MT will remain an inspiring dream.
On the QuickSilver blog we have done various experiments which demonstrate the inefficacy of internet translation engines…