Automatic Translation Vs Manual Translation

Translation can be defined as an act of interpretation of the meaning of a content and consequent re-production of equivalent content. The content or the text that is required to be translated is called "Source Text" and the language in which the source text is to be translated is known as "Target Text". In simple language, translation is also described as a communication written in second language having the identical meaning as written in a first language.


Today translation has turn out to be one of the key tools to have a better understanding of different cultures and in past couple of years has gained its recognition world-wide. However, looking at the present scenario translation service can be broadly categorized into two categories, namely:

Automatic Translation: Automatic or automated language translation is a process where any translation task is carried out by computer software. The most vital point to understand automatic translation is that by applying specific rules, the software initially analyze and then transmits the grammatical structure of the source text into the target language. Also known as machine translation, it is a process where the translation is produced by contemporary technology, without the interference of human translators.

Advantages of Automatic Translation: The main advantage of automated language translation in comparison to manual translation is that it is done by computer and therefore it works faster than a person and thus saves time while translating any large content. Moreover it is cheaper and reliable than manual translation. In addition to this you can also translate any web page content and inquiry of search engine by the use of machine translation systems.  This is especially efficient when the language combination belong to the same family, like Spanish/ Portuguese, Spanish/ French, Spanish/ Italian.

Disadvantages of Automatic Translation: It is based on systematic rules and so sometimes it is unable to solve the uncertainty. It can not always produce perfect quality translations, but as a tool for having the gist or generating the primary draft of a translation, it can be very cost saving and beneficial. The most important point to consider in machine translation is if you run the translation task through machine translation system and reverse the translation process in order to re-translate the content back into the source language, this activity can increase the error rate and will make translations quite silly, though sometimes useful for getting the gist.

Manual Translation: As the name suggests, this is a translation process, where any translation task is carried out by human translators. In manual translation, the translations assignments are performed by translators and editors who are experienced enough to perform the translation task and convert the source text into target text.

Advantages of Manual Translation: The most vital advantage of manual translation is it maintains the confidentiality. In most of the cases people use translation service to translate their private emails or legal documents. Now in case of machine translation any minute file corruption or deletion can result in the wrong translation result. No one would agree to give or store his private correspondence in any computer, therefore maintaining the ethics of this profession, manual translation can be more trustworthy. Though the processing speed in machine translation can be high, but with manual translation the probability of improving syntax or grammatical errors is higher. Sometimes it can be more suitable to choose manual translation for certain tasks. For example, if a content that is required to be translated contains repetitions of same text, then it comes into special consideration, and with manual translation you can have better result.

Disadvantages of Manual Translation:  Usually any professional translator is either specialized in one or few defined field and can perform translation task in his/her specialized field but with machine translation system you can translate any copy and any area. Apart from this if you want to translate special terminology, all you need to do is just switch on a corresponding setting. Finally in case of a professional translator, if he or she translates your source copy, you have to pay enough money for each page but very frequently we require only a rough idea of the content. In this case machine translation system is more consistent and effective for you.

On the face of it, all you need to do is decide what kind of translation you require depending upon the complexity of the source text and the time required to get the final result.

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Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Automatic-Translation-Vs-Manual-Translation&id=1036194] Automatic Translation Vs Manual Translation