The machine translation debate: enough is enough

How many experts over the years have proclaimed that, because of the latest advances, the time has now arrived to invest in MT? Full disclosure… I include myself in this, as I launched SDL’s integrated MT solution nearly ten years ago. And it’s still happening today, as Lingo24’s recent press release highlights.

How many times have you read about how machine translation will revolutionise communications by translating everything we need between languages? And how many times have translation industry watchers declared that the end is nigh for the human translator?

Well, my view is, enough is enough! There should be no need for further debate, because it is clear that:

• MT will never be good enough to remove the need for human translation
• MT is often good enough to add value to existing human translation processes
• MT is often good enough by itself to deliver useful translations

As SDL is putting it, now is the time to talk strategy. You need to focus on how you will get the most out of MT. And here I think you need to focus on doing just enough translation. What do I mean by this? You need to do:

• Just enough human translation where you need the guaranteed high quality
• Just enough post-edited MT where you need consistency from your translation process
• Just enough pure MT where consistency and quality are luxuries over utility

By adopting a just enough approach, you will deliver a better customer experience, faster, at lower cost. Get these parameters wrong, and you will damage your customer experience, slow down your time-to-market and spend too much on translation. The focus now should be on how you build flexible and dynamic translation processes that will always route content through the right translation path.

No more debate, just enough is enough!