The whole world is automating, and translation is no exception. We all know Google Translate, which is probably the most famous among machine translation tools. But there are more. In today’s article, we will explore whether machine translation is really the future of translation. 

1. WHAT IS MACHINE TRANSLATION? 

Machine translation is a fully automated translation process, where translations are produced without human intervention. The machine translation tool produces the target text entirely on its own. There are freely available machine translation tools, such as Google Translate, and those that are not freely available and are used mostly by translation agencies and companies. Agencies and companies usually train their own machine translation engines to make them as efficient as possible. But beware! Machine translation is not the same as computer-assisted translation. In the latter case, the text is translated by a human translator who uses programs, online terminology collections, online dictionaries, and the like as help. 

2. USE IN THE TRANSLATION INDUSTRY 

Despite the rapid progress, human intervention is still required, especially for more complex languages. Also, the quality of the machine translation depends on the size of the translation corpus. The larger the corpus, the better the translation. Machine translation is also not suitable for all types of texts. It is especially not optimal for creative texts that contain a lot of figurative meaning. 

3. WILL TRANSLATORS SOON BE OUT OF JOBS? 

While machine translation works very well with some language combinations, such as French to English, and with some texts, such as standardized texts, it is still not able to produce a perfectly acceptable final text without the assistance of a translator. Translators will thus keep their jobs.