Why Human Translation

With machine translators such as Google Translate readily available and free, people may wonder why we still need human translators. While I see the significant breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) especially during recent decades, I do not believe for a moment that anyone should seek help from AI when it comes to translation. There are certain fields AI can never replace, and translation is one of them.

Language is inherently spiritual and human as opposed to mechanical. Just as no strategy fits all situations one encounters in real life, no formula works all the time when it comes to translating. Machine translators will probably never be able to get anywhere near human ones in terms of quality, as they have no understanding of the greater spiritual and cultural atmospheres in which the words are situated, and do not take contexts into account.

Elizabeth the First once wrote that “as an immortal soul is superior to a mortal body, so whoever is wise judges things done by the soul more to be esteemed and worthy of greater praise than any act of the body”. This is true - the soul is the most valuable asset we possess, and translation is meant to be a human-only field. When it comes to translating documents and literary works of all kind, certified and professional human translators are the only resources one should turn to.