By Ishita Goel
Technology plays a significant role in our daily lives. It has altered the way we live, interact, shop, and much more, from how we search for information to how we market and sell products and services. Professional translation and localization are crucial vehicles for conveying our thoughts, sentiments, feelings, views, and ideas across language barriers. The days of isolating oneself in a room with paper strewn over the desk and writing with a pen are long gone. New translation technology now allows us to work faster and more efficiently.
The translation process changed considerably with the introduction of personal computers, email, and the Internet. A major advancement in translation technology has been the development of Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) and Translation Memory (TM) tools such as SDL Trados, Wordfast, MemoQ, and many more. When it comes to high-stakes, complicated communication, such as business negotiations, technical documentation, or legal disputes, these tools, in combination with a content management system, deliver high-quality translations to clients.
These tools work by segmenting the text. As a translator works through the document, the program saves the translated content in a database, which can then be re-used in future related translation projects. Machine translation delivers a translation output directly, although machine-translated content often needs to be corrected and refined by a human translator afterwards. Content management systems are available as desktop applications or directly online through a web interface, allowing users to conveniently manage all digital content, including translations, and to bring structure and order to digital content creation.
When it comes to assisting the translation process, digital tools can be invaluable. CAT tools enable multiple translators to work on a single project collaboratively and in real time. They not only speed up project completion but also improve output quality. They enhance accuracy by alerting translators to errors in punctuation and capitalization, to product or service names, and to redundant or untranslated text. They also help translators find the right terms. Thanks to the prevalence of online resources, it now takes seconds to gather multiple references for a single term.
While machine translation technology has enormous potential for the future, it still faces substantial challenges and has some notable limitations when compared to human translation. There is something in professional translation that computers simply cannot replicate, at least not yet. It has to do with linguistic intricacies and contexts that require human understanding, such as empathy, a profound sense of sarcasm, humor, hidden meaning, and, most importantly, human nature.
To summarise, there is no doubt that technology has continuously transformed the translation sector, and new trends develop regularly. Translation technologies are genuinely beneficial. Instead of replacing people, technology works best when it unites with them, taking over monotonous and repetitive tasks and leaving translators to do what they do best: making good judgments.
