Human translators vs. machine translators

Can Machines Outperform Human Translators?

Ever since machine translation became neural machine translation in 2016, big tech has been trying to persuade us that it has reached human-level quality. Today, it has gone one step further. The nerds over in Silicon Valley are now trying to convince us that machine translation outperforms human-level translation. Are they right? Not on your nelly!

What exactly are the claims?

Anyone with knowledge of the industry knows that human translation has always been superior to machine translation in just about every way apart from speed and price. Big tech knows it, too. That’s why its claims are made with some interesting caveats.

The study only looks at whether a deep learning translation system called CUBITT can produce translations that are comparable to those produced by humans in the domain of ‘news’ translation, which accounts for a tiny proportion of the whole translation sector. The study also claims that machine translation only outperforms human translation in the metric of ‘adequacy’, but what exactly does that mean?

The sentence-level translation Turing test

The tests compared the work of CUBITT against human translators on almost 8,000 sentences across 53 documents. 15 human evaluators were then asked to rate the translations for ‘adequacy’.

The definition of adequacy for the purpose of the test was ‘adequately expressing the source text’s intended meaning in the target language’.

The human evaluators found that 52 percent of CUBITT’s sentences scored higher than the human translations when measured against this metric, while just 26 percent of CUBITT’s translations scored lower than sentences translated by humans. Impressive, right?

Here’s the catch

When compared to the work of human translators, the evaluators observed that CUBITT made fewer errors in addition of meaning, shift of meaning and omission of meaning. However, it made significantly more errors when it came to cross-sentence context and readability, with the work of the human translators rated as more fluent.

Interestingly though, another test compared 100 pairs of sentences that were translated by CUBITT and Google Translate. In this case, the evaluators found that CUBITT’s translations were less likely to be identified as the work of a machine when compared to those produced by Google Translate.

Better than Google Translate but still worse than humans

Big tech’s claims that CUBITT can outperform human translators seems to be more of a newspaper headline than a representation of reality, given that the metric of ‘adequacy’ is one that has been devised specifically for this test.

However, CUBITT can outperform fellow machine translation tool Google Translate, and that is something to celebrate. Machine translation undoubtedly has an important part to play in the industry, so any improvements are welcomed, but the truth is, there’s still no substitute for the work of a professional human translator.

Human translation from a leading UK team

At Linguistica International, our professional team of human translators can help you reach your customers in more than 250 languages. Get in touch to discuss your translation project today on 02392 987 765 or email info@linguistica-international.com.

A few fascinating facts about business translation

4 Fascinating Facts About Business Translation

Business translation services can open up a tremendous amount of opportunities for firms that want to sell their goods and services overseas. To illustrate that, we’re going to bring you a few fascinating facts about business translation that serve to highlight and quantify the opportunities that exist.

For example, did you know that there are only 11 languages that account for more than one percent of all the content online? This means that if you just translated your product and service information into just those 11 languages, you could reach over 75 percent of the internet users around the world. That equates to more than 3.4 billion potential new customers!

Sound enticing? Then read on for a few more fascinating facts about business translation.

1. Just 1.8 percent of online content is written in Chinese

Linguistically speaking, the Chinese are massively underserved when it comes to online content. China has the second-highest number of internet users and there are nearly a billion Chinese speakers around the world, yet just 1.8 percent of online content is written in Chinese. Given the native language bias of online shoppers, with 76 percent of consumers wanting to buy products in their native language, it’s clear that translating your content into Chinese could deliver extremely attractive returns.

2. The web is predominantly English-first, but other languages are gaining ground

Around 60 percent of all the websites in existence are written in English, which reinforces the fact that the web is predominantly English-first. However, the dominance of the English language is on the slide, with several other languages gaining ground. The next most common language online is Russian, accounting for 8.6 percent of all websites, while 4 percent and 3.2 percent of websites are written in Spanish and Turkish, respectively.

There’s also a big disconnect between some of the world’s most commonly spoken languages and their presence online. Chinese, Bengali and Punjabi are three of the world’s 10 most commonly spoken languages, spoken by more than 1.2 billion people, yet they’re still relatively scarce online.

3. Arabic is the fastest-growing language online

There are already around 300 million native Arabic speakers, with many of those living across the Western world. In fact, Arabic is the fastest-growing language in the US and online. From 2000-2020, the number of Arabic-speaking internet users grew by 9,348 percent, bringing the number to 237 million. The combined gross domestic product of the Arab-speaking world is £2 trillion, giving you some idea of just how lucrative a market it could be.

4. 57 percent of online shoppers make purchases from overseas retailers

Research from Shopify has found that 57 percent of online shoppers make purchases from overseas retailers. However, there are some important caveats to that. Consumers who buy from foreign websites still want to be able to read product reviews, watch videos and read information written in their language. Many also want to be able to purchase products online in their currency.

Business translation represents a tremendous opportunity

The growth of the multilingual web and the scarcity of some of the world’s most spoken languages online represents a fantastic opportunity for businesses that take the time to do it right. At Linguistica International, our mother tongue linguists are ready to help you get your business online in the languages your customers speak.

Call 02392 987 765 or email info@linguistica-international.com to discuss your business translation goals with our team.