Here is an announcement from Google:
In a given day we translate roughly as much text as you'd find in 1 million books. To put it another way: what all the professional human translators in the world produce in a year, our system translates in roughly a single day. By this estimate, most of the translation on the planet is now done by Google Translate.
Looks like I got out just in time!
Given what Google Translate does to German and Japanese sites I read, I think that translation by "meat" (people) will be around for a very long time still. Am I being overly optimistic?
ReplyDeleteYou're right in the absolute sense, Michael. But in many situations a translation only needs to be "good enough": it is probably not intended for "outside" consumption anyway and the client just needs to understand the general thrust. Purely from the point of view of the professional translator, this is bad news indeed!
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