Neural Machine Translation

In the age of global connectivity and its ever-smaller planet in terms of relationships, business and technology in rapid development, the obstacle of different languages, especially in business terms, is becoming increasingly meaningful. And the various realities of more or less professional translations on the one hand and Google Translate on the other have not yet solved a problem that instead seems to have found the definitive protagonist as a future solution: Artificial Intelligence. 1

AI, in combination with language translation is the key to succeed in optimizing the processing of natural language and in the analysis of feelings. And Google is well aware of this, since November 2016 it has implemented a neural network to its translation tool. We know that the final version is still light years away, but the furrow is traced. But the question arises : Why all these difficulties?

"With language there are no clear and defined rules and the conversation can go in an infinite number of different directions".

Already today Google's technology considers the whole sentence, but this is still not enough. Jorge Majfud, associate professor of Spanish and Latin American literature and international studies at Jacksonville University, explains that: "The meaning of a word depends on the rest of the sentence but the meaning of a sentence also depends on the rest of the paragraph and the rest of the text, since the meaning of a text may depend on the overall context". "Translating is basically interpreting, not just an idea, but a feeling. Human feelings and ideas that only human beings can understand".

Technology has brought significant changes in the language services sector. There are a myriad of tools that professionals could only dream of a few decades ago, computer-aided translation tools, instant communication and comprehensive glossaries at the click of a button are just a few examples of how technology has made life easier for translators in recent decades.

The concept of 100% human translation, i.e. without IT support, will no longer exist in the future; however, this does not mean that translators will lose their jobs, but they will have to learn to use more than one IT tool to speed up the translation process. Automation is already a reality in the translation industry; this allows you to optimize workflows and save time and money in every new project. In this way, translators can concentrate on the creative part, rather than wasting time translating technical terms and bringing the text to life.

Despite all these advances that artificial intelligence has made in recent decades, AI translation is still not perfect and humans still have the upper hand, but compared to ten years ago, AI translation has improved incredibly. With the help of present-day translation devices like the CM translator, Japanese store owners can do business in multiple languages instead of hiring employees to help translate. Prior to AI, translators would do all the translations themselves with the assistance of a hardbound translation dictionary. Now, some translators will use an Neural Machine Translation (NMT) engine like Google Translate to do the first round of translations and then edit those translations. It's estimated that by 2022, most business translations will be done by NMT with human editors to come in after to clean up the text. This is not hard to believe as NMTs can translate materials at very low to no cost as well as go through a much higher volume of text at a faster rate than humans. Even so, we're still in a transition period where NMTs rely heavily on human translators to correct issues.

For this reason, the goal of completely replacing human translators with machine translation tools still seems a long way off. In texts that are predominantly expressive/aesthetic, i.e. where the author's personal style is essential, or particularly linked to a particular sub-culture, it is very difficult to think of a form of machine translation that can completely replace the human being.

Therefore the human factor is essential, in translation as in interpretation, also in the analysis of the text, which makes it possible to detect a whole series of characteristics of which it is necessary to be aware in order to produce an effective and accurate translation: idioms, rhythm of sentences, allusions, choice of some words rather than others. Language is a form of human communication and as such it is dynamic precisely because it is embodied, immersed in a physical body that lives in osmosis with the outside world and with the minds of other individuals and groups of individuals; and it is precisely on this osmotic communicative process, on interaction and experience, that human intelligence is formed and expanded. 2

In light of all this, humans may soon reach a point, through the help of artificial intelligence in the form of an NMT system, a portable technology or some other technology, in which every language is understood. It would be like going back to the mythical time before the Tower of Babel when humans all spoke one language.3

Natural languages are a huge melting pot for computers, the same word can have multiple meanings, completely different. In the various translation schools, not only language but also culture is studied, and this becomes essential. The idioms, quotations and historical references are impossible to translate directly without a huge cultural background. New approaches to machine translation include Wikipedia, literature books and slang dictionaries as well as etymological dictionaries as a basis from which to learn. Overall, it is to be hoped that the role of interpreter and translator will not disappear completely, the society in which we live cannot afford it; the enormous creativity of the human brain will always be needed, perhaps better if accompanied by a more advanced machine translation tool.