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Machine translation and price reductions
Thread poster: Thomas Loob
Richard Purdom
Richard Purdom  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 18:05
Dutch to English
+ ...
er no Sep 29, 2020

Tom in London wrote:

The problem is that some people are in love with technology, even when it doesn't work.


On the contrary old chap, some people are unrelenting technophobes, even when technology helps.
Personally I'm very glad that every time I need new tyres, some luddite doesn't appear with prehistoric tyre levers hand forged by his great granddaddy, because 'you only use a machine if you can't do it by hand'.

Christopher Schröder
Jorge Payan
 
Daryo
Daryo
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:05
Serbian to English
+ ...
And some people could do with a bit of "casuistique" ... Oct 1, 2020

Richard Purdom wrote:

Tom in London wrote:

The problem is that some people are in love with technology, even when it doesn't work.


On the contrary old chap, some people are unrelenting technophobes, even when technology helps.
Personally I'm very glad that every time I need new tyres, some luddite doesn't appear with prehistoric tyre levers hand forged by his great granddaddy, because 'you only use a machine if you can't do it by hand'.



Comparing translating with fixing tyres is basically repeating what is fundamentally wrong with the idolatry of MT.

Not every "progress" is real progress.

No one could label me "technophobe" - I've ever met only few translators who could be said to be more "technically minded" than myself. I will happily use any technological advance that REALLY helps. For example I don't see the point of carrying around a box of paper maps when a good sat-nav is more useful; my first "personal computer" used for typing / editing my translations was a ZX Spectrum (at that time ordinary typewriters were "the norm") etc ...

Translating IS NOT some process that can be modelled into some simple algorithm that could be easily automated.

Unfortunately for the apologists of MT, a real translation includes the requirement to first understand the source text. The day there are machines capable of that, "machine translation" will mean something more than PR hype. Can't see that happening anytime soon.

As it is now, "Machine Translation" is more like a virus that escaped from a research lab - an ongoing/unfinished experiment let loose on the unsuspecting public that are used en masse as guinea-pigs. Just do a search on "MT output polluting search results" ...


[Edited at 2020-10-01 08:13 GMT]
 
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Machine translation and price reductions







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