What Types of Machine Translation Are There

What Types of Machine Translation Are There

It became clear from the beginning that we will need help to get through life. We need people for interpersonal relationships and emotional comfort. We needed family for support. But along with people, we also needed things. If the wheel hadn’t been invented, we would have been way far behind when it comes to progress. But thankfully it was because the humans needed it. We need telephones to communicate with each other, TV to stay up to date about latest happenings, and smartphones to stay connected on the go. Everything that we use in our daily lives is there because we need it and without them, our lives would be a lot difficult.

However, there is a limit to the amount of control we are willing to give other people and things over our life. None of us like when our families try to control our lives and tell us to choose things that don’t bring us any joy. That’s the point where we have to choose whether their support is worth all the pressure they are putting on us. The same goes for peers. When it comes to things, if we get too used to them or they start ruling our lives, it is called an addiction, which is not a healthy behavior.

Some people confuse addiction with drugs and alcohol only when it can be anything and that’s why a balance has to be maintained in our relationship with things, especially modern gadgets. People end up getting in accidents when they refuse to look away from their phones while driving. Such incidents work as a reminder for everyone else that even good things can cause damages when we give them too much control over our lives. We wouldn’t let them attend important functions in our place, would we? But the way we are accepting technology’s interference in every walk of our life, they might not need our permission to infiltrate our lives.

Translation and Machines:

The translation industry has helped humans a lot in different fields. Without it, there would have been a lot of misunderstandings between the speakers of different languages. But thankfully, we don’t have to find out more about that world. However, there is a problem stirring in the industry that needs to be addressed and that is the authenticity of machine translation. Before we can accept or reject something, we need to find out all about it so we can make an unbiased decision.

Although everyone knows that machine translation (MT) can never come close to the one carried out by human interpreters, it is a fact worth considering that it has proven helpful at times. It is also true that it sometimes helps translators too. Sometimes a translation carried out by a machine is refined by a translator and the final product is much better in quality than machines are capable of producing. Humans will always be better at creative tasks than machines but with the help of the latter, they can get their work done faster. The efficiency of people also improves when they have help of some kind and the help offered by machines is the best one because it doesn’t come with an expiration date.

Types of Machine Translation:

MT may have been the topic of debate regarding its reliability. But MT has four types and not all of them are unreliable. In order to get a better understanding of MT, here are its four types:

1. Statistical Machine Translation (SMT):

This is the type of MT that uses statistical models to analyze bilingual data to find out similar words and construct their meaning. It analyzes a large amount of data and therefore often has an answer for your translation questions. But since it uses statistical methods to analyze data, it doesn’t consider context. Which means you can’t rely on it for its authenticity. Google Translate is an example of SMT and that’s why it often has errors.

2. Rule-Based Machine Translation (RBMT):

As the name indicates, RBMT relies on rules, grammar rules to be precise. It analyzes grammar rules of both the target language and the source language in order to create a more accurate translation. However, since RBMT relies on lexicons, it means it will require a long time to achieve a certain level of efficiency. And even after the completion of work, it will have to be heavily edited by human experts.

3. Hybrid Machine Translation (HMT):

This type of MT combines both SMT and RBMT. It uses translation memory to get more accurate results. However, like RBMT, it also requires editing. Anyone who uses HMT will have to hire human translators to complete the task.

4. Neural Machine Translation (NMT):

A new approach in MT is neural machine translation. It utilizes a neural network made up of nodes. These nodes are modelled after the human brain and can hold word or phrases. They are able to connect the words in a more accurate way because they are trained to see the context with the help of bilingual texts. NMT has proven to be a lot more accurate than the other types of MT due to its design. But it still needs a lot of work.

Machine translations are not something you can rely on when sensitive information has to be handled but it is getting better day by day and will be able to better assist translators in the near future.