In the ever-changing landscape of technological innovation, artificial intelligence (commonly abbreviated as AI) has marked a revolutionary breakthrough, profoundly impacting many areas; and translation has certainly not been left out. This change has redefined the role of translators, but also confirmed, once again, their key role in cross-cultural communication.
Traditionally, translators had a specific and clearly identified task: that of accurately interpreting and converting texts from one language to another. This role required a deep mastery of languages and their lexical and grammatical structures, but, beyond that, also an understanding of cultural nuances, a consideration for the author’s intention in the original texts, and a sensitivity to subtler semantic nuances. Thus, translation has always had an extremely and deeply human character, where fidelity to the original meaning and adaptation to the target context are held together in a balancing act.
Artificial intelligence has made significant changes in the field of translation since the introduction of machine translation tools – famously, Google Translate and DeepL. There is no doubt that these technologies have proven to be very convenient and effective for the translation of simple texts, but when dealing with idioms, puns and cultural implications in original texts, they still struggle to capture the linguistic nuances. This reflects the current limitations of AI, which remains a tool that may be capable of handling vast volumes of information and operating rapidly, but proves much more lacking in understanding the subtleties that humans can intuitively grasp.
In the age of artificial intelligence, the role of translators has thus evolved considerably, out of necessity. A knowledge of languages and cultures certainly remains crucial, but today a confident skill in employing the typical tools of artificial intelligence has become crucial. Machine translation has on its side the advantage of dramatically speeding up the translation process, which allows translators to handle a larger volume of work; in addition to this, AI can help identify and correct basic errors as a proofreader would, improving translation accuracy. To take full advantage of these technologies, however, translators need to understand how they work and how they can become a tool that enables them to improve their work – first, for example, by learning to understand when to rely on machine translation and when to intervene to make corrections or changes. Second, they must be able to use AI tools to handle even more complex tasks, one of them being localization, that is, the adaptation of a text to a specific cultural context differing from the original. This ability to combine linguistic and technological skills is now becoming a fundamental requirement for the modern role of the translator.
AI can serve, as mentioned, as a support tool for translators, and free them from elementary tasks to allow them to focus on more subtle and complex aspects of the text. Artificial intelligence can provide a correct basic translation; on this, then, the translator can work to improve accuracy, adapt style and ensure consistency with the target cultural context. However, it is important that translators use AI appropriately: the attempt to completely replace human labor with technology, at least in the current state of things, has no hope of working.
Indeed, with the arrival of AI, the translator assumes a key role not only as a user of a technological tool, but also as its curator and even trainer. In practice, this means that translators can improve the quality of machine translation tools by leveraging their expertise.
For example, translators can provide feedback on translation errors, which are of great help in improving AI algorithms, or they can help “teach” the AI new terms or expressions that have not yet been included in its reference database. In addition to this, translators can also work on the localization of artificial intelligence software, adapting user interfaces and response systems to those specific needs of different cultural and linguistic contexts that they can understand and interpret much better than software.
The arrival of AI is certainly changing the way we all work and communicate, and the field of translation is no exception. To make the most of artificial intelligence, translators must adapt to this new reality and supplement their traditional skills with a thorough understanding and confident mastery of these new technologies. This will not only enable them to continue to provide high-quality translations in a shorter time and with less effort, but also make it possible for them to actively contribute to the evolution of AI. Artificial intelligences in no way threaten the role of the translator; on the contrary, they enrich it and give it access to a new era of innovation and collaboration between man and machine.Photo by Colin Behrens on Pixabay
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