subject: Translation Software - Making You Better, Faster, And More Lucrative [print this page] A while ago, I had a good friend who was doing documentation translations as a side job. He worked for a large company that was developing a very popular word processing application at the time, but whenever he could, he and his wife would contact other businesses and offer to translate their documents back and forth between Japanese and English. This was all done without the use of translation software; they used notepads, dictionaries, and hours and hours of proofreading. It was very labor-intensive, and as such, they weren't able to do as much of it as they would have liked.
I was looking through a magazine focused on language acquisition and came across an advertisement for document translation software. I sent away for more information, and when it arrived, I took it to show to my friend and his wife. We read through the material together, and I watched the dollar signs start shining in his eyes. With that type of software, they could double, maybe even triple the amount of work they were doing in even less time. Basically, they could either open a doc file or scan a hard copy document into a data format and then process it through the software.
The software would then give them options for possible words and allow editing for grammar and fluency. When the document was done, all they had to do was reformat it save it, or print it out to be mailed to their client. No more laborious digging through dictionaries to find the right words, or guessing at the meanings of character combinations to find the right matches. All of that was handled by the software.
That was a few years ago now, and translation software has come a long was since that time. Now, there are programs that can translate into multiple languages simultaneously, and the ability of the software to provide contemporary translation, allowing for changes in colloquialisms and usage, can be taken care of with updates, handled either as additional modules or by internet-based upgrades. Most still require a basic understanding of both the target and original language, but even that has become less important with some translation software.
I don't see the time when the human translators become obsolete; there are many things that computers are never going to be able to understand, but the ability for a business or individual to more and better is here and will be growing exponentially over the coming years. The gaps between languages, cultures, and countries is growing smaller and smaller, and translation software is playing a big part in that growth.
