Automatic Translations (Software) Vs. Human Translation

A posting from Voice Talent / Translator David Barrera

Who better than a human to interpret another human?
A machine with artificial intelligence?
I don't think so.
 
Despite advances in artificial intelligence, there are still flaws in “automatic” translations from one language to another.
Software-aided translations are not refined enough because they are “literal”. They translate word by word…disregarding context, or, how the words are properly used in the target language.
 
The wealth of the human translator, in many cases, lies in his or her life experience, something that AI will never have. Knowing idiomatic expressions or slangs, how to interpret them according to the social, cultural context, the subject being discussed and the time period, are some things that AI does not do well.
 
Formality is important when speaking Spanish. You do not speak to your family using the same informal expression of “you” as you would with a business professional, such as a doctor. Using formal or informal Spanish will determine how you conjugate verbs, as well as which subjects and articles you use. When translating from English to Spanish, automatic translations still seem not to recognize when to use the informal pronoun "tu" and when to use the formal pronoun "usted" and they also don’t know how to maintain one form or the other even within a paragraph! In fact, the first clue that someone has used a computer to translate, is the mixing of the formal and informal pronouns! In Spanish, it’s one or the other, never both within the same text.
 
Machine translations are also not accurate with numbers expressed in words, they do not correctly interpret in Spanish the abbreviations that English speakers make for certain cases, ruining promotions and generating confusion with your Spanish speaking audience (in Spanish, a monthly car payment is NOT expressed as “three ninety nine”. That would imply $3.99! Not the intended $399.00) 
 
Ultimately, AI can learn more and more, but our way of speaking and writing is always changing, global society is adopting new expressions and discarding others, changing the meanings of many words, exchanging expressions between different languages. In short, our communication will never stop evolving and I doubt that machines will be able to keep up with us.