Human-Assisted Translation

The history of translation dates back as far as the history of civilization. Humans wanted to communicate with other people. In order to achieve this, they created a common language but somehow this common language ceased to exist and people started to speak different languages. The Tower of Babel is the most common theory, which suggests that people tried to build a tower so high that it even penetrates the sky and this made God angry. As a way of punishment, God made them speak different languages. As different languages emerged, the need for translation began.

Translation can be simply defined as transfer of source text into the target text as much as possible. There are many debates regarding to whether %100 equivalence is possible or not. Of course, languages contain cultural codes and because of that, it is considered that %100 equivalence between two different languages may not always be possible. But there is nothing we can do about this. So, we must try our best to make this transfer process meaningful and accurate.

One of the biggest breakthroughs in translation history was the advent of machine translation. It was much faster and cheaper than human translation but there was something missing: cultural adaptation and refining. Even today; contrary to the immense improvements in artificial intelligence, humans are an essential part of the process of translation. Because language itself is not only a puzzle waiting to be solved but also it is carrier of local culture and emotions. That's why machines cannot replace humans when it comes to translation. In fact; from a different and optimistic perspective, humans will act as an editor in the future. To put simply, translators will first translate source text into target text with AI and then they will make necessary adaptations and corrections. This will mark a new era in translation history which I call as ''human-assisted translation''