The Reasons We Don't Use AI in Translating Client DocumentsThe first reason is that we are responsible professionals who care about our clients.
(March 13, 2024)
Although there is a white-hot frenzy over artificial intelligence and many entities that are best characterized as translation brokers have jumped on the AI bandwagon, we are committed to not using AI to create artificial translations, for a number of good reasons.
We front-load quality into the translations we produce.Artificial translation just automates the age-old approach of starting with a rough translation and repairing it.
For a variety of reasons, Japanese-to-English translation has often taken the approach of obtaining a first, rough translation, followed by considerable editing or rewriting, only sometimes by someone capable understanding the Japanese source text and the subject matter.
Artificial translation done by the alien intelligence of AI has provided dramatic acceleration of the process of creating a first rough, artificial translation at a greatly reduced cost, but with an added twist; the translation can be spiced with mistranslations and hallucinations not likely to occur when even an unqualified professional human translator does the first translation.
HallucinationsArtificial translations provide them; we don't.
Just like the output of various chatbots, artificial translations from AI are susceptible to hallucinations, and regularly get things seriously wrong.
This comes from the AI system's total lack of real-life experience. It cannot do a reality check on the artificial translation it produces because it doesn't understand—and is not concerned with—reality, but rather just attempts to emulate the writing behavior of a human. This is based on statistics, rather than a true understanding of the subject matter or the real world in which the subject matter is relevant.
Real translations are best executed by real professional translators with experience in and understanding of the real worldAI doesn't get out in the real world much—or at all, actually.
Professional translators commonly have a deep understanding of the subject matter they translate, often gained from experience in the real world, something that is impossible for a collection of software instructions to achieve.
AI doesn't care.Your translations need a translator who cares; AI couldn't care less about you or your documents.
There numerous things that AI cannot and does not care about:
AI doesn't care about quality
Being a collection of software instructions, AI "translators" are not concerned with—and don't have a stake in—the quality they produce.
AI doesn't care about whether it should ask—and doesn't ask—questions of the source-text originator.
A conscientious professional translator will ask questions to clarify things that are not clear, including aspects of how a document is to be used. An AI artificial translation system cannot and does not do that.
AI doesn't care about the context of your translation
It doesn't consider the context of your document, the intended reader, and the purpose of the document.
AI doesn't care whether it is actually capable of producing a translation of sufficient quality
Whereas machine translation systems of the past were known to flag or leave things untranslated that they couldn't translate, AI translation systems suffer from Dunning-Kruger effect and simply produce what they produce, the assumption being that someone will be able to correct problems. That assumption is sometimes quite optimistic and accompanied by significant risks.
Security
If you don't mind having your documents dumped into an unidentified database in a black box for use by unidentified entities in unidentified and unknowable places, you might consider using AI to create artificial translations.