What is Machine Translation (MT)?
MT refers to the software technology that automates translation.
What is Machine Translation (MTPE)?
Machine Translation Post-Editing (MTPE) is a process designed to save the time and cost involved in translation. It has two steps. In the first step, machine translation software is used to translate your content. In the second step, a human editor improves the machine translation. Finally, you make use of both the power of artificial intelligence and the difficult-to-replicate human expertise.
Can I simply use MT output as it is?
Not advisable. While MT can guarantee a faster turnout, it cannot guarantee 100% accuracy or consistency. Additionally, machine translated content may lack a natural flow. As a result, when it comes to quality, you should not rely entirely on MT.
Why do I need a human editor to “post-edit” the translation of an MT software?
The translation done by any software is never 100% accurate and consistent. Hence, you need a human professional editor to check the translation done by the machine against the original content. Only a human editor can make a translation sound natural to your customers, vendors, employees, and so on.
The result? Translation that will help you engage with your clients or business partners in no time, and speak directly to their needs in a natural way.
Why is there a renewed interest in MT today?
Artificial Intelligence has vastly improved the ability of a computer to translate. This has boosted the adoption of MT across the world. Technology giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Alibaba and language tech companies like Systran, Lilt, and DeepL are expanding the horizon of MT. Even regional tech companies such as Baidu in China and Yandex in Russia are building up MT capabilities.
Online machine translation tools like Google Translate and Bing Translator are used every day by millions of people around the world to translate billions of words in more than a 100 languages.
How does MT work?
Machine Translation, also known as “Automatic Translation”, is not a new technology in the first place. It has been around since the days after World War II. So far, there have been three major MT systems.
- The first generation of MT systems are based on a set of grammar rules. They were known as “Rule-Based Machine Translation” systems. It was a good start but the output made the source text hardly understandable.
- The second generation of MT was based on statistical models. The technology analysed large bilingual text corpora consisting of translations of human translators. With this knowledge, the MT software identified possible matches of words and phrases between two given languages. The accuracy of statistical MT tools was better than that of rule-based models but not fully usable
- Now, we are using the third generation of MT. Known as Neural Machine Translation (NMT) systems, MT now works like the neurons of our brain!
- Instead of analysing words and phrases separately, the NMT system analyzes entire sentences just like human brains do. The earlier tools analysed sentences only partially. They could generate translations only at a word or phrase level. But NMT grasps a whole sentence, and generates more accurate and naturally sounding translations.
- Another advantage of NMT is its ability to ‘learn’ on its own. The learning algorithms, developed by AI experts, make a NMT system to constantly improve its ability on its own using a huge parallel corpora of previously translated content in language pairs. As technology stands today, MT guarantees an accuracy of about 90% or more.
How significant is NMT and why is it a revolution?
NMT systems are almost a miracle, a dream come true for humankind. NMT has already demolished the language barrier for millions of people.
Today one can talk in his or her own language and let a NMT gadget capture the voice and instantly translate it to the listeners in their languages. Machine Translation is here to stay.
What MT software does Ailaysa use?
Ailaysa uses many state-of-the-art MT engines developed by various companies. Ailaysa doesn’t develop any AI engine. It simply uses the tools that best meet your needs.
What do the editors do?
Even the most sophisticated MT engine can’t generate 100% accurate translations for you. And that’s where our editors step in. They use their skills, expertise, and experience to the following tasks:
- Eliminate grammatical and syntactic errors
- Guaranteeing that no sentence, phrase or piece of information is lost in the translation
- Enhancing the style so that your message appeals to your target audience
- Making sure that the edited text is culturally and legally appropriate
- Making sure the correct terminology is used consistently throughout the text
- Using proper spelling, style and punctuation.