| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Poll: Has your opinion on the use of machine translation changed in the last 5 - 10 years? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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| Typists seem to be a fine example | Aug 19, 2022 |
Guofei_LIN wrote:
I still believe machine translation will fundamentally change the translation landscape, making the traditional human translators obsolete as their skillsets are not suitable for the new requirements. A translation degree in college will be useless. Just like many years ago professionals use typists to do the typing for them, but now they type their letters themselves; translators will go the same way as typists went, professionals (or their assistants) will be able to put together a decent document with the assistance of machine translation (which is improving everyday, unlike human translators who never improve if given another ten thousand years)
Their work probably involved as much mental effort as we are spending everyday. I just finished working on a big document written in pure Chinglish. I was so mad about the quality of that Chinglish that I wanted to write a colorful description of my experience in a forum post under an appropriate heading, but I guess I won't bother, I'll just share a few details. They left some text in Chinese hieroglyphs (which seems to be business as usual for Chinese translators judging from my experience), but I could translate those with no problem: I'd run them through a couple of MT engines (I have four of them packaged neatly in an app) and figure out the meaning pretty quickly (having selected English as the target language). It wasn't that the MT did all the work for me, it was tandem work. All the pain was in trying to understand what the text in Chinglish meant. Don't know if it was written by a human or machine-translated, but it took all my intuition as a tech translator to produce something that made sense, and still there were passages that were simply undecipherable for me (like the word "stigma" that was supposed to mean some material recovered from waste Li-ion batteries). I don't know why translations from Chinese are so consistently bad (I'd say they are worse than what you're likely to get from Turks, Hungarians, Finns, Egyptians – or Russians for that matter), but if a translator in China is someone who produces such translations, then sure, MT will take over very soon. But don't you have good translators in China? I suppose you do, and someone should know how to find them and retain them. As for the big and radical changes the future is bound to bring us – I don't think I am the right person to speculate about them
[Edited at 2022-08-19 15:59 GMT]
| | | | | Less than 10 years before human translators becoming fully obsolete | Aug 19, 2022 |
I've seen loads of improvements in the past 3 years, and I can increasingly feel my Project Managers' desperate breathing over my neck as they try to justify to their clients our rates, or our mere existence even.
As MT's accuracy increases at obscene speeds, PM's increasing requests to make the translations "less MT-like" are now beginning to sound as vague and meaningless as a marketing client asking his designer to put "more design" into the illustration.
I'm now hon... See more I've seen loads of improvements in the past 3 years, and I can increasingly feel my Project Managers' desperate breathing over my neck as they try to justify to their clients our rates, or our mere existence even.
As MT's accuracy increases at obscene speeds, PM's increasing requests to make the translations "less MT-like" are now beginning to sound as vague and meaningless as a marketing client asking his designer to put "more design" into the illustration.
I'm now honestly considering to learn coding on the side, and hopefully the Translation industry doesn't implode before I can change industries. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Sadek_A 
Local time: 11:32
English to Arabic
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Roberto Govia wrote:
Less than 10 years before human translators becoming fully obsolete
Not going to happen without our extensive help.
And, I -for one- will NOT help my replacement in return for pennies! 🚫 🚫 🚫
Roberto Govia wrote:
I'm now honestly considering to learn coding on the side, and hopefully the Translation industry doesn't implode before I can change industries.
Driving a Tuk-Tuk is so much easier, takes no time learning, and requires no education, certification, experience or even a license!
| | | | | We still getting phased out in 10 years or less | Aug 19, 2022 |
Sadek_A wrote:
Not going to happen without our extensive help.
And, I -for one- will NOT help my replacement in return for pennies! 🚫 🚫 🚫
I refuse those jobs too, but for every me and you, hundreds of desperate others accept them.
Also, really, as an IT translator I can tell you, they don't really need THAAAAAT much human assistance to evolve Artificial Intelligence, most of the best artificial intelligence today exists by leveraging deep learning algorithms that even their creators don't fully grasp.
Just analyzing pre-existing translations will do most of the work, only creative-heavy areas might remain as the biggest hurdle for the technology, and even then, I bet algorithms might be developed to auto-detect the few areas of a paragraph that actually need the human hand, and only pay you for that.
Sadek_A wrote:
Driving a Tuk-Tuk is so much easier, takes no time learning, and requires no education, certification, experience or even a license!
Lol, self-driving cars (ubers and the like) and buses are also becoming the norm in the coming decade, 2 decades for third world countries. Heck, I would not be surprised if the WEF gets its way, that even car/vehicle ownership will be slowly phased out in the next few decades.
So yeah, I'm joining the code monkeys.
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Sadek_A
Local time: 11:32
English to Arabic
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Roberto Govia wrote:
We still getting phased out in 10 years or less
If you like to think so, that's absolutely fine.
I, on the other hand, choose to calculate the matter precisely, with intellect not emotions.
I said before, in a different thread, which apparently was taken literally by the receiver who totally missed the symbolic meaning:
"You are what you eat". If a company ingests cheap, amateur, sub-standard linguists, the company fundamentally becomes a cheap, amateur, sub-standard establishment.
Likewise, if MT ingests cheap, amateur, sub-standard inputs, that MT necessarily becomes a cheap, amateur, sub-standard product that can never be fully & successfully relied on, ever!
Roberto Govia wrote:
I refuse those jobs too, but for every me and you, hundreds of desperate others accept them.
Even if we are to believe that, which is not true!
We would then need to ask ourselves: are they really faithful in their inputs, and more importantly are they accepting any form of accountability for these inputs, given the pittance they are receiving in return?
I know the answer, but will let you think and figure it out on your own.
Roberto Govia wrote:
Also, really, as an IT translator I can tell you, they don't really need THAAAAAT much human assistance to evolve Artificial Intelligence
Actually, they do, and will continue to do. Simply because language never stops evolving.
Roberto Govia wrote:
most of the best artificial intelligence today exists by leveraging deep learning algorithms that even their creators don't fully grasp.
Then, it is not to be trusted. How can a translation client trust a data-generating tool whose creators don't understand how it works, thus rendering both the tool and the creators unaccountable before the client who might suffer severe damages due to relying on that tool.
Roberto Govia wrote:
Just analyzing pre-existing translations will do most of the work, only creative-heavy areas might remain as the biggest hurdle for the technology, and even then, I bet algorithms might be developed to auto-detect the few areas of a paragraph that actually need the human hand, and only pay you for that.
They can develop all the algorithms they want, without the help from top-notch translators the product will never reach even the near-perfect stage, let alone the perfect one.
Besides, similar algorithms can be developed to render "coding" automated, with no need for human element at all.
Roberto Govia wrote:
Lol, self-driving cars (ubers and the like) and buses are also becoming the norm in the coming decade, 2 decades for third world countries. Heck, I would not be surprised if the WEF gets its way, that even car/vehicle ownership will be slowly phased out in the next few decades.
Then, grab the chance, and milk it while it's still there. Who needs pittance-paid language services when Tuk-Tuks are on the offer?!
Roberto Govia wrote:
So yeah, I'm joining the code monkeys.
Be sure to get back to us with the developments when they fully automate that "tree".
| | | | David GAY
Local time: 09:32
English to French
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Unfortunately I m not surprised by the current state of the translation market. The only thing I hadn t anticipated is that the market is now controlled by a few companies. It s bad news because it means that many agency owners are now sellers and want to exit the market. It makes things even more painful for freelancers who are now no more than a cog in a huge machine and have no control over their rates.I had anticipated some market concentration but its pace is really dramatic. The other thin... See more Unfortunately I m not surprised by the current state of the translation market. The only thing I hadn t anticipated is that the market is now controlled by a few companies. It s bad news because it means that many agency owners are now sellers and want to exit the market. It makes things even more painful for freelancers who are now no more than a cog in a huge machine and have no control over their rates.I had anticipated some market concentration but its pace is really dramatic. The other thing I hadn t anticipated is that many very successful freelance translators with more than 10 years of experience have left the market in recent years.But the worst is yet to come
[Edited at 2022-08-25 19:04 GMT]
[Edited at 2022-08-25 19:07 GMT]
[Edited at 2022-08-25 19:08 GMT]
[Edited at 2022-08-25 19:09 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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