Why You Shouldn't Place Your Trust in AI for Accurate Translations: Preserving a Place for People Amidst the surge of developments in artificial intelligence, AI translation tools, like Google Translate or DeepL, are growing in popularity. They’re also quick, free, and are available to use any time of the day. But when it comes to precise language translation and nuance as well as cultural sensitivity, can they replace human translators altogether? The answer is no.
Although AI has made huge advances with language processing, relying on it for important or complicated translation services, may cause mistakes, misunderstanding, or even serious reputational damage. Here is why human translators have an inherent advantage. AI Fails to Understand Context and Nuance AI translation engines are nothing more than loads of algorithms, databases, and statistics. In some cases, they can rely upon data to produce the accurate word choice, but they miss the context, tone, and intent that human translators develop easily. An example.
The word "bank". One person could mean a place that people conduct financial transactions, while another could mean a riverbank. One translator would also most likely grasp the meaning immediately, whereas the AI, might get it wrong as they often do with idiomatic or conversational language. Cultural Sensitivity is not something that can be automated. Language has social connotation and culture is expressed through language. Humor, sarcasm, and formality/informality vary extensively with people's region.