The vital role of machine translation in the world of manufacturing

Machine translation is growing in popularity around the world for its major time and cost saving efficiencies. The manufacturing sector relies on a global supply chain, is steeped in regulation and uses vast amounts of technical jargon which must remain accurate no matter which language it’s presented in. For those working in the industry who wish to expand exponentially overseas, machine translation technology is playing a vital role in their growth.

But recent headlines exposing inaccuracies in basic offerings of machine translation technology might be a cause for concern. For example, a thread of tweets about Google Translate’s capabilities recently went viral and saw them accused of making sexist assumptions about gender neutral language[1]. Meanwhile, when Amazon used its own automatic translation technology to launch its first ecommerce site in Sweden, it hit the headlines when the translations outputted were lewd and vulgar in nature, bringing attention to the launch for all the wrong reasons[2].

Despite some concerns, online searches for ‘machine translation’ have increased 16 per cent in the last five years, while searches of the related term ‘machine learning’ have increased 135 per cent[3]. According to a recent report, by 2025, 75 per cent of the work of all translators is expected to shift from creating translations to reviewing and editing machine translated sections[4].  Over the last six years alone, UK-based translation provider The Translation People has experienced a 2,016 per cent increase in the volume of work it carries out with machine translation, while website enquiries for this service increased 1,130 per cent.

Machine translation offers several benefits to international businesses, but it must be carefully applied and not used in isolation as part of a blanket approach to translations. In fact, the technology only comes into its own – providing the most accurate, effective and creative translations – when delivered as a hybrid solution together with skilled language and translation professionals.

Machine translation works by processing input and producing output. Words and their sentence structure, the subject of the material and grammatical information are all analysed within a translation engine, then converted into the desired language. However, the accuracy of the output is determined in large part by the size of the language database sitting behind the machine. The more bilingual material fed into the engine by base engineers, the better the result will be. The quality of the output is also determined by the nature of the text, as some content types work better than others. Direct and straightforward language – such as that found in instructions and user manuals – is well suited to machine translation, which is one of the reasons why it’s growing in prevalence in the manufacturing industry.  

But to achieve the highest quality results requires the expertise of a human translator. An assigned language expert can train an engine over time, enabling it to understand an individual business’ style of writing, tone, nuances and industry jargon. If any element of a translation is incorrect, it’ll be spotted and edited by the translator. These edits can be used over time to train the machine not to make the same mistake again in the future, driving a continuous improvement in the output of the machine, achieving a more efficient process and greater translation accuracy.

Machine translation relies on quality time and expertise being invested to achieve optimal results. Assuming it will work perfectly every time is to risk materials becoming erroneous, and therefore risk your business’ reputation, client relationships and future success. Using machine translation without validation by a specialist linguist is not advised for business or safety critical material, such as material data safety sheets, which must be translated to the highest standards before export.

To avoid these risks, businesses should work with a translation provider that collaborates to understand the scenarios where machine translation would be a benefit, and where human input is required, depending on the type of text and language combination required. Many texts may not have their objectives met with a standard machine translation solution, and clients may save time and money by having an expert, human translator work together with them in a more manual capacity, rather than spending several weeks or months nurturing a machine system. However, as machine translation becomes more sophisticated, combining machine translation with human expertise should become normal practice for any manufacturing businesses which can’t risk anything less than 100% accuracy in the translation of its materials.

Author: Alan White, Business Development Director of The Translation People

[1] https://www.indy100.com/news/google-translate-language-sexist-b1820580

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/oct/29/amazon-hits-trouble-with-sweden-launch-over-lewd-pussy-translation

[3] https://explodingtopics.com/topic/machine-translation

[4] https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3994429/market-guide-for-ai-enabled-translation-services