Why do we need professional translators now that we have machine translation?

Ten years ago, back in the Dark Ages of AI, there were plenty of memes and social media posts making fun of ridiculous or inadvertently scandalous translations produced by computers. So much so that Google Translate, the most popular machine translation provider at the time, became a by-word for shoddy and shocking translation.

Not any longer. 

There are now some pretty good machine translations of a quality almost unimaginable just a decade ago. 

That means that many translations that just needed to be “good enough” are no longer sent to human translators. And vastly more texts that would previously never have been translated, because it was far too impractical, expensive or time consuming, are now translated on millions of people’s mobile phones every day. It is such a wonderful tool for so many people. 

Imagine you have a small business that sells pottery. Previously you could only buy from sellers you could actually understand and speak to. Now, you can easily and instantly translate the websites of tiny producers from all around the world. It may not be perfect, but you can get the gist, and decide if it is worth contacting them. You can make the initial contact with a machine translated e-mail, they can reply in the same way, and you can now make business contacts in a way that was previously inconceivable.

Now imagine that, after all that back-and-forth, you actually want to sign a contract setting out the technical specifications, delivery conditions and payment terms.

Are you really going to trust a machine translation to do that?

Probably not because once you have reached that point, you actually need to be 100% sure that what you are signing is correct. You now have skin in the game and have to put your money where your mouth is. If you could get by without a professional translator before, you definitely need one for this stage.

That is an example of how machine translation actually expands the market for professional human translators.

Just like there are some legal matters you can deal with yourself, by downloading a standard lease agreement to let a property, for instance (or simply buying one from a stationer’s in pre-internet days), when the complexity increases a bit, you want to make changes, or there are specific clauses or terms you need to negotiate, that is when you need an actual lawyer who can make sure you are not inadvertently breaking some rule or regulation, or wording it in a way you didn’t realise could invalidate the whole thing.

Machine translation is pretty good these days, perhaps 90% accurate in some cases. That is perfect to read a report of a football match on a foreign website, or work out the kind of food a restaurant serves before booking. But human translators work to far higher standards: we are talking more like 99.9%+.

I can’t fit a kitchen, but I know people who are pretty good at DIY and might be able to do a decent job themselves (perhaps accepting some imperfections). But even they will need a qualified electrician or gas fitter at some point for legal or safety reasons. 

It works the same way with translation. Sometimes “good enough” really is just that. But on many other occasions you need a professional to do it right.