Artificial intelligence is not the end of translation, but it is the end of quality translation. Machine translation creates a draft without respecting the syntax or structure of the target language, requiring significant post edition that will take longer than translating the text from scratch. Furthermore, automatic translation compromises the meaning of the translation, obliging the translator to work with a text that sounds forced and literal, in which it is necessary to do a considerable cut and paste to reestablish the natural order of the target language.
The consequence of computer-assisted translation is that it eliminates the part of transferring one language to another, but on requiring considerable editing work, agencies pass the text on to the translator paying them half of their rate per word since they consider that the text only needs to be “touched up”. Hence, the sector begins to lower rates and the translator no longer finds it worth working for less or paying self-employed fees with such low rates. As a result, there are fewer and fewer qualified translators on the market, and, little by little, Translation and Interpreting degrees are beginning to lose ground.
Some types of translation are more adequate for automatic translation than others, such as technical translation, for example, and computer texts, which are highly literal and have many words already in English. However, it is more complicated to translate a financial text well using a machine. Insurance, banking and stock market terms, etc. cannot be translated literally, and it is impossible for a robot to translate a balance sheet or income statement accurately because, like all machines, it will translate the text word by word and the headings of the financial statements will sound hilarious when they are translated literally.
Legal translation and literary translation are not suitable for assisted translation either: a minor translation error in a legal text can lead to multi-million-pound lawsuits for a company and irreversibly damage its reputation. Likewise, no robot can capture the nuances of a writer, leading to a loss or distortion of all the magic and beauty of the work. A machine will select the most common meaning of a word, but that word will have various meanings according to the context, hence machine translation is not infallible and in many branches of translation, it should not even be envisaged. Despite that, many agencies resort to robots, only to later blame the translator for the bad quality of the translation when they see the customer complaints pour in… It is not surprising that many translators are abandoning this type of agency because they are irreparably damaging the industry, and that they endeavour to work only at serious agencies that do not use machine translation. And many of these agencies are on the edge of bankruptcy due to the constant complaints from their clients because of the poor quality of texts submitted to computer-assisted translation…
At Financial-Legal Translation, we do not use automatic translation because, in the end, it causes more work for the translator than it takes away. However, we will translate your financial statements, due diligences, auditors’ reports and other financial translations, economic translations, legal translations and literary translations at half the price of the major agencies, using only professional translators when other agencies are charging double to use machines without human intervention, because we continue to be a small, serious quality agency, with the most competitive prices on the market, respecting the conventions and structure of each language and the quality and integrity of the translation.
