The conflict between machine translation and human translation

In the era of technological development and the reliance of many industries on artificial intelligence, and the disappearance of many jobs that have been replaced by technological machines, here we must pause for a while to think about the matter, is the field of translation among the fields that have been replaced by machine translation? And what has artificial intelligence added to this field? And what are the positive and negative aspects of its use? In this article, we will answer all these questions:

1- What is machine translation?

Machine translation is the use of websites or software that provide the service of translating texts automatically as soon as you enter the source language and choose the target language, and with the click of a button, the translation appears without any human intervention in the translation process. The target language of this machine translation can also be changed to more than 100 languages instantly. It provides a reasonable minimum understanding of the nature of the text to be translated.

2- What are the advantages of machine translation?

The advantages of machine translation can be summed up in a few points:

1. 1.  Fast, as the translation can be done instantly.
   2. Cheap or free cost.
   3. The possibility of translation to more than one language in a few minutes.
   4.  Easy to use in public life to provide a simple translation.

3- What are the disadvantages of machine translation?

The disadvantages of machine translation are as follows:

1. 1. Machine translation is far from accurate and creative.
   2. It only provides a general idea of the text to be translated.
   3.  Not every word and sentence is translated accurately.
   4. It cannot deal with complex texts.
   5.  Not useful in specialized translation fields.
   6.  It cannot provide simultaneous interpretation.
   7.  It cannot be relied upon as a professional translation.

4- What has machine translation added to the field of translation?

Machine translation is considered an assisting factor in the translation process. After the existence of many, many glossaries and dictionaries, it has saved a lot of time and effort, facilitated searches, and restricted the use of paper dictionaries during the translation process. However, it cannot be relied upon for complete texts because it only provides a literal translation without appreciating the nature of context and specialization of the source text, as well as grammatical errors. So, machine translation can never replace human translation.