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Translation

‘The human touch’ – why we cannot rely on machine translation

With the rise of sophisticated artificial intelligence, the prevalence of personal computers and smartphones, we have seen the birth and development of a whole host of online translation engines. Services such as ‘Google Translate’ and ‘Bing Translate’ are designed to supersede the traditional methods of translating one language to another, by use of a specially designed program. The supposed benefits of these ‘machine translation’ tools include accessibility, speed and cost effectiveness, with many of these being free to use at any time online. However, are these translation engines as useful as they initially appear? Today we will be comparing the advantages and disadvantages of these tools, and where human translators stand in the modern day.