Most fiction writers prefer to deal with language barriers by pretending they don’t exist. In the realm of science fiction, creators can take the easy way out by throwing in a line about “the universal translator” to explain why the galaxy is filled with English-speaking aliens. Like so many fantastical parts of science fiction, though, machine translation is becoming a reality.
Google Translate has come a long way from its origins as a comically-inept automated translator. Now that Google has expanded the service to offer audio and visual translation, it’s starting to look like a genuine tool for overcoming those pesky language barriers. How useful is the app in 2015? We ran a head-to-head competition between Google Translate and a professional human translator to find out how the machines are doing.
As you can see from the attached infographic, Google Translate is pretty good at mining basic sense out of both spoken and written Spanish. It’s able to capture the general gist of the samples given to it. The app is a long way from replacing thinking professionals, though. In both spoken and written translation, the work of a bilingual human is still light-years ahead of the app’s results.
On the page, it’s clear that Google’s results were patched together by a machine. Grammar is heavily fractured, and several of the word choices are still faintly ridiculous. Professional translator Adriana, in contrast, turns out well-crafted English that fully captures the intricacies and the tone of the original writer. The casual reader would be satisfied with Google’s results, but a professional looking for a piece of public-facing content would be horrified.
The results of the audio translation test were more telling. Even with a very precise Spanish speaker reciting slowly and clearly, Google misses words. It also works on a word-by-word basis, making the preservation of sensible grammar especially difficult. While an alert user should be able to glean some basic information out of the app, Adriana once again provides a much more sensible translation.
While Google Translate helps the user make sense of a foreign language, it certainly doesn’t produce the kind of nuanced, refined translation that you’d want to use in a professional setting. You certainly shouldn’t deny the impressiveness of the app’s capabilities; it could be a life-saver for people stranded in a foreign land who need to find their bearings and communicate effectively. As a tool for delivering polished translations suitable for long-term use, though, it leaves a lot to be desired. It’s clear that Adriana’s job is secure for the time being!
Written by Ashley Harris (Verbalink)
