Could Artificial Intelligence Win Out Over Humans In Translation?

While artificial intelligence has been helping people navigate the world for a while now, recently, it has started to impact the translation industry. There has been a lot of hype surrounding AI translation for a couple of years.

Tech giants like Google and Bing have shown that it's possible to translate text in multiple languages with almost human-level accuracy, using only a computer. This was a substantial breakthrough, and it's only going to get better with new research and innovative AI tools.

In other words, the Translation Industry is undergoing a significant shift because of artificial intelligence (AI). Computers have long been used for translation, but now AI-powered tools are revolutionizing the industry. Until now, translation has been a human-intensive field, requiring specialized language skills and training.

But now, the world of translation is changing. Machines are getting better at understanding human languages, which is making them better interpreters, translators, and writers. The use of AI in the industry has significantly impacted businesses and their ability to communicate with customers and partners.

Unbabels Survey (2021) reveals that 68% of online customers are more likely to interact with brands in their local language. — Source.

However, many AI-driven solutions aren't great at translation in the context of a conversation or a writing assignment. Emotions and culture transfer is the biggest challenge for AI translators. That's why you still need a human translator to interpret and understand the context of messages in foreign tongues.

So, the question arises, will AI ever be able to replace human translators?

Let's find out the potential and benefits of AI in translation.

Efficient and flexible

AI is driving a revolution in the translation industry because of the convenience it offers to its prospects. Just imagine how annoying it would be to keep a person with you all the time during your trip to a different language-speaking country. Thanks to AI, that has made it a thing of the past. Now, we have the power to comprehend anything written in any language with just a few clicks. And the good news is such AI translation solutions keep learning and evolving in terms of accuracy on their own. 

Promptness

Artificial intelligence (AI) translation speed and accuracy are improving rapidly, enabling real-time human-like translation on the web and in apps. Consequently, businesses can program solutions that automate language learning and deliver translation results concurrently. It opens up a world of opportunities for companies to let their target audiences access their services in local languages. 

Take the IBM Watson Assistant for example. It is a natural language AI chatbot built on deep learning, machine learning, and NLP–natural language processing models. Watson can understand human conversation and questions and find the best answers, helping users complete their intended actions. The intent detection algorithm is constantly improving and offers 79% accuracy in answering customer queries. Insane, right?

Accessibility

You can not have a human translator wherever you go in the world to facilitate understanding different languages. That's where AI translation comes to your rescue to fill the language gap anytime, anywhere.

For example, many cutting-edge AI-powered translator apps, such as Microsoft Translator, Google Translate, Reverso, and more, allow their users to translate voice, text, conversations, camera photos, and even screenshots in over 70+ global tongues. Such apps make exploring new countries and languages fun and flexible, which would otherwise be time-consuming and tedious with human translators.

Data Retention 

Does your human translator ever provide you access to your translation history? It sounds stupid. The human mind is not capable of storing and processing loads of data accurately. But AI isn't a human mind. It is a program that can do anything you want it to, including storing your language history. 

Hence, AI does not only simplify finding the meaning of words in various languages in a fraction of a second. But it also makes understanding and writing different human languages better than humans sometimes. Besides, it's also improving our ability to detect fraud, expand our horizons, and help us navigate through a world filled with complex languages.

Are Human Translators' jobs in danger because of swift and efficient AI?

Translating text and phrases from one language to another has long been a challenge for human interpreters. It takes a human being to read and understand the intended meaning of a speech or document and then transfer that understanding to their own language. So, that the audience can understand. 

Nonetheless, it requires a level of empathy, knowledge, and experience that is difficult to replicate, mainly when translating across languages and cultures. Today, however, machines can perform human translations at a significant scale and, in many cases, are faster and more accurate than human translators.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming the go-to technology for many industries, from healthcare to transportation to finance. But one of the most compelling applications of AI is in the field of language translation — enabling people to communicate with each other in their own language, even when they don't speak it natively. 

Today, the most advanced AI-powered language translation systems can accurately translate between the most common languages — such as English and French. 

However, it all comes down to speaking tone and style. There are tons of slang words, phrases, and idioms in every different language that AI might not understand. So, it may translate such words into their literal meaning, which can radically change the sentence's meaning.

What is the future of AI in translation?

Machine translation is a field of AI that deals with the automatic translation of text from one language to another. 

The translation field has seen rapid progress in the past few years, with the development of neural networks and deep learning. Artificial intelligence has been making waves in the translation industry for a while now. Its capabilities have been increasing exponentially, to the point where it is now possible to create translations that are nearly indistinguishable from those produced by humans.

This has led to a lot of speculation about the future of translation and whether or not AI will eventually take over the industry. However, there is no easy answer, as the future of AI is difficult to predict. Yet, it is clear that AI will continue to play a significant role in translation in the years to come. 

Furthermore, as these methods continue to be refined, machine translation will become more accurate and efficient. Besides, Neural networks and deep learning allow machines to learn from data, which basically leads to better translations. Therefore, machine translation will be used more extensively in businesses and other organizations as it becomes more reliable and accurate.