Over
the years there have been many exuberant predictions of change that
would fundamentally alter the localization business. However, most of
these dreams of the industry have never come to pass.
Trends that never arrived: All translation will just be
editing of machine translation
Most linguists simply will not work for a cut rate to edit substandard machine translation.
Linguists see it this way—first they
have to spend thousands on translation tools so they can get paid a lower rate
for repetitions. Now MT means an even greater fragmentation of the rate.
It seems even more unlikely that MT (even edited) would end
up being as satisfying to an end client as work completed by professional
linguists. For instance, translation in Japanese, Vietnamese, or Thai by expert
linguists is regularly knocked back for being “completely wrong.” This is due
to style, tone and other factors specific to each tongue, and it takes nothing
less than trained, experienced linguists working with client feedback to get it
sounding correct to the client’s ear.
NEXT: Trends that never arrived: Trados will become the
standard TM tool
