Machine translation is undoubtedly a major step in the development of digital technologies and at the same time facilitates international communication.
Anyone who does not speak a foreign language can still easily translate any text from any language. You don’t even have to leaf through thick dictionaries, write down the words you find and form sentences. All you have to do is enter or copy the text in question into the source language field in Google Translate. Within seconds, the translated text will appear in the right-hand window in the selected target language.
Google Translate
What does the result look like? If you have ever tried to translate using a computer, you will of course know that you can never fully trust the text you have in front of you.
The machine selects the correct meaning from all the meanings of a word based on its popularity and frequency in language use. However, it is often not the most common meaning of a word that is actually meant. And that is precisely where the main problem with computer programs lies.
By the way: An experienced translator can recognize a machine-translated text at first glance. It is not just the choice of words that is often incorrect: in many cases, the sentence structure of the source text is also retained. The grammar rules of a foreign language often require a different sentence order.
What is machine translation suitable for? Primarily for use by laypeople in everyday life. Here it can actually be helpful. It supports the user in many different online activities – whether communicating with foreigners, reading comments or at least understanding the basics of foreign language content that the user is interested in. However, when it comes to translations for professional, business or official purposes, Google Translate and other similar programs are not particularly good tools. This serious and responsible task is the responsibility of qualified linguists who have studied the context intensively and know the grammatical peculiarities of the respective language.
Of course, machine translation programs are constantly being improved and expanded. They learn new words and their meanings. However, developers have not yet been able to bring these programs close enough to human thinking to replace the human translator.