What is Machine Translation? What are the Strategic Advantages and Disadvantages?

Machine translation ya da MT (Machine Translation), çevirisi gerçekleştirilecek olan bir metnin, çeviri işlemi için geliştirilmiş bir bilgisayar yazılımı tarafından tercüme edilmesidir. Makine çevirisinde çevirisi yapılacak olan metin, çeviri gerçekleştirecek olan bilgisayar yazılımınca kaynak dilden hedef dile otomatik olarak aktarılmaktadır.

MT is dynamic and self-learning, constantly renewing and updating itself for more accurate translations, especially in today's fast-paced technological world. We observe that machine translation has developed at an extraordinary pace in recent years and has become more preferable to human translation. It should be noted that MT should not be confused with Computer Aided Translation tools. CATs (Computer Aided Translation) are memory and terminology software designed to facilitate human translation processes. However, MT compiles statistical data and produces the target text by scanning millions of previously translated pairs, i.e. source and target texts, while taking into account the grammar and spelling rules of the language. We will publish a more detailed blog post on CATs soon.

Advantages vs. Disadvantages of Machine Translation

Speed Advantage

MT is extremely fast compared to human translation. Thanks to this speed advantage, many brands prefer machine translation. Since human translation processes are usually completed in a certain period of time, brands have to wait for this work and incur a certain time cost to complete the work.

With machine translation, you load a text with tens of thousands of words that need to be translated into computer software, click on the translate button and within seconds you have a translation of your text. No matter how you look at it, this is a time-saver.

Cost Advantage

Machine translation is also cheaper in terms of cost than human translation. As clearly seen in the example of Google Translate, developed by Google in recent years, it is possible to perform machine translation without incurring any costs.

Diversity in Language Meaning

Machine translation can include any language loaded into computer software. This means that MT can translate from many source languages to many target languages at the same time.

Disadvantages of Machine Translation

Meaning Errors, Mistranslations

While machine translation offers advantages such as speed, cost and language diversity, it also brings some disadvantages.

Bu dezavantajlardan en göze çarpanı ise yanlış çeviridir. MT, bir bilgisayar yazılımı olduğu için insan tarafından yapılan çevirideki gibi bazı sözcüklerin farklı anlamlarını doğru kullanamayabilir. Özellikle aynı yazılan fakat bağlam farklı olduğunda bambaşka anlamları olan yüzlerce sözcük, en iyi MT yazılımları için bile önemli bir sorun olmaya devam etmektedir. Yüz, koca, göz, gez, al, ocak, gibi çok sık kullanılan ve en az iki, zaman zaman dört-beş farklı yaygın anlamı olan bu sözcükleri doğru çevirebilmesi için MT’nin henüz zamana gereksinmesinin olduğunu düşünebiliriz. Bu durum da makine çevirisi ile yapılan bir tercüme işleminde sık sık önemli anlam hatalarına rastlanmasına neden olabilir.  En azından önümüzdeki beş-on yıl boyunca makine çevirisinden sonra bu alanda uzmanlaşmış bir çevirmen tarafından hedef metnin mutlaka kontrol edilmesi ve düzeltilmesi gerekmektedir.

Post-editing after Machine Translation (MT):

1. a) Full Post-editing: This is the process of corrections made by the human translator and training of the MT process in order to produce an acceptable target text after machine translation. The stylistic features of the text are also reflected in the target text.
2. b) Fast Post-editing: This is the process of post-editing by a human translator to produce a intelligible target text after machine translation.

Machine translation is still evolving, is still being debugged and is rapidly becoming preferable to human translation.

The issues that customers or users should pay attention to regarding MT are the following:

1- Is security/privacy ensured? It is necessary to prevent the information uploaded to the software from being leaked by the software company and used by third parties intentionally or unintentionally.

2- Is the software designed in a specific domain or are language pairs from all types of domains included in the statistics? For a highly efficient target text, software that is built in each specific domain separately should be preferred.

3- Is post-MT proofreading done by specialized translators? Translators need to be familiar with MT dynamics, feedback methods, and have specific domain knowledge.