The 2022 European Language Industry Survey revealed an interesting finding: 35% of participating independent language service providers see Machine Translation (MT) as an opportunity and 41% see it as a threat. Translators’ relationship with technology – especially machine translation – has always been a complicated one.
Once when I was a kid, I was passing by a car wash which had the big written sign “Machine washing and polishing” with a friend who asked me, all amazed, “Wow, they have machines to wash the cars?!” And the guy who worked there heard him and replied, mildly disappointed “Do I look like a machine to you?” We did not expect that, but he, indeed, was still a human being. Same goes with machine translation (MT).
The Atomic Era conviction that computers will eliminate the need for translators – or even the need to learn foreign languages at all – within a few short years still persists. But will it?
Ciklopea
Miloš Matović