Notes on Translation
On the Use of Automated Translation Tools
It seems to be a trend in my life that fateful discoveries come from conversations at weddings.
For example, while I had heard about “ChatGPT” long before May 2024, it was at a wedding that month that someone finally handed me their phone and showed me how to use this AI tool to find information.
At that moment, my life changed.
No, I am not routinely using AI chat tools (yet) for translation, though I understand that they can be used for this purpose.
They remind me in a few ways of automatic-translator websites, which have been around for years. In my experience, these types of sites can be very useful for translation, but they have limitations.
Here are a few to keep in mind:
They can be wrong in predictable ways. In my experience, automatic translators can be useful for producing the “skeleton” of a translation, but not necessarily a final translation.
In other words, they can save the translator tedious work with respect to simple words and phrases, quickly producing a piece of text that is somewhat or generally correct—however, the translator must then have sufficient working knowledge of the language involved to correct the (seemingly) inevitable major or minor errors.
Outside of the translation context, I have seen a similar trend using AI chat tools for legal research. While AI can produce helpful leads or give a general sense of where useful information is found, it has often given me wrong answers. Without having prior education and experience in law, I might never have noticed.
They can be wrong in unpredictable ways. I will always remember using an automatic translator to translate the phrase “on the shelf” from English to Estonian in 2012. The result that came back in Estonian would have translated back to English, literally, as “hopeless old maid.” I do not know why this happened.
In summary, automated tools can be an incredible resource and time-saver in translation, as in many other contexts. However, if the user does not already have background knowledge in the target languages, their use is not without risk.
Happy translating!