Translation Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==Machine translation== {{Main|Machine translation}} Machine translation (MT) is a process whereby a computer program analyzes a [[source text]] and, in principle, produces a target text without human intervention. In reality, however, machine translation typically does involve human intervention, in the form of pre-editing and [[post-editing]].<ref name="NIST">See the [https://www.nist.gov/speech/tests/mt/ annually performed NIST tests since 2001] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090322202656/http://nist.gov/speech/tests/mt/ |date=22 March 2009 }} and [[Bilingual Evaluation Understudy]]</ref> With proper [[terminology]] work, with preparation of the [[source text]] for machine translation (pre-editing), and with reworking of the machine translation by a human translator (post-editing), commercial machine-translation tools can produce useful results, especially if the machine-translation system is integrated with a translation memory or [[translation management system]].<ref>{{cite journal|last=Vashee |first=Kirti |title=Statistical machine translation and translation memory: An integration made in heaven! |journal=ClientSide News Magazine |volume=7 |issue=6 |pages=18β20 |year=2007 |url=https://webmailcluster.perfora.net/xml/deref?link=http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=8mtygbcab.0.ksqvgbcab.ro78ttn6.33435&ts=S0250&p=http://www.clientsidenews.com/downloads/CSNV7I6.zip |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928140236/https://webmailcluster.perfora.net/xml/deref?link=http:%2F%2Frs6.net%2Ftn.jsp%3Ft=8mtygbcab.0.ksqvgbcab.ro78ttn6.33435&ts=S0250&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.clientsidenews.com%2Fdownloads%2FCSNV7I6.zip |url-status=dead |archive-date=28 September 2007}}</ref> Unedited machine translation is publicly available through tools on the [[Internet]] such as [[Google Translate]], [[Almaany]],<ref name="Altarabin2020">{{cite book |last1=Altarabin |first1=Mahmoud |title=The Routledge Course on Media, Legal and Technical Translation: English-Arabic-English |year=2020 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-000-19763-1 |page=15 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9A4HEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA15}}</ref> [[Babylon Software|Babylon]], [[DeepL Translator]], and [[StarDict]]. These produce rough translations that, under favorable circumstances, "give the gist" of the source text. With the Internet, translation software can help non-native-speaking individuals understand web pages published in other languages. Whole-page-translation tools are of limited utility, however, since they offer only a limited potential understanding of the original author's intent and context; translated pages tend to be more erroneously humorous and confusing than enlightening. Interactive translations with [[Pop-up ad|pop-up windows]] are becoming more popular. These tools show one or more possible equivalents for each word or phrase. Human operators merely need to select the likeliest equivalent as the mouse glides over the foreign-language text. Possible equivalents can be grouped by pronunciation. Also, companies such as [[Ectaco]] produce pocket devices that provide machine translations. [[File:Claude Piron.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Claude Piron]]]] Relying exclusively on unedited machine translation, however, ignores the fact that communication in [[natural language|human language]] is [[wikt:context|context]]-embedded and that it takes a person to comprehend the context of the original text with a reasonable degree of probability. It is certainly true that even purely human-generated translations are prone to error; therefore, to ensure that a machine-generated translation will be useful to a human being and that publishable-quality translation is achieved, such translations must be reviewed and edited by a human.{{efn|J.M. Cohen observes: "Scientific translation is the aim of an age that would reduce all activities to [[Technology|techniques]]. It is impossible however to imagine a literary-translation machine less complex than the human brain itself, with all its knowledge, reading, and discrimination."<ref>J.M. Cohen, "Translation", ''[[Encyclopedia Americana]]'', 1986, vol. 27, p. 14.</ref>}} [[Claude Piron]] writes that machine translation, at its best, automates the easier part of a translator's job; the harder and more time-consuming part usually involves doing extensive research to resolve [[ambiguity|ambiguities]] in the [[source text]], which the [[grammatical]] and [[lexical (semiotics)|lexical]] exigencies of the target language require to be resolved.<ref>[[Claude Piron]], ''Le dΓ©fi des langues'' (The Language Challenge), Paris, L'Harmattan, 1994.</ref> Such research is a necessary prelude to the pre-editing necessary in order to provide input for machine-translation software, such that the output will not be [[garbage in garbage out|meaningless]].<ref name="NIST"/> The weaknesses of pure machine translation, unaided by human expertise, are [[Logology (science of science)#Artificial intelligence|those of artificial intelligence itself]].<ref>[[Gary Marcus]], "Am I Human?: Researchers need new ways to distinguish [[artificial intelligence]] from the natural kind", ''[[Scientific American]]'', vol. 316, no. 3 (March 2017), pp. 58β63.</ref> As of 2018, professional translator Mark Polizzotti held that machine translation, by [[Google Translate]] and the like, was unlikely to threaten human translators anytime soon, because machines would never grasp nuance and [[connotation]].<ref>[[Emily Wilson (classicist)|Wilson, Emily]], "The Pleasures of Translation" (review of Mark Polizzotti, ''Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto'', MIT Press, 2018, 182 pp.), ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', vol. LXV, no. 9 (24 May 2018), p. 47.</ref> Writes Paul Taylor: "Perhaps there is a limit to what a computer can do without knowing that it is manipulating imperfect representations of an external reality."<ref>Paul Taylor, "Insanely Complicated, Hopelessly Inadequate" (review of [[Brian Cantwell Smith]], ''The Promise of Artificial Intelligence: Reckoning and Judgment'', MIT, October 2019, {{ISBN|978 0 262 04304 5}}, 157 pp.; [[Gary Marcus]] and Ernest Davis, ''Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust'', Ballantine, September 2019, {{ISBN|978 1 5247 4825 8}}, 304 pp.; [[Judea Pearl]] and Dana Mackenzie, ''The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect'', Penguin, May 2019, {{ISBN|978 0 14 198241 0}}, 418 pp.), ''[[London Review of Books]]'', vol. 43, no. 2 (21 January 2021), pp. 37β39. Paul Taylor quotation: p. 39.</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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