Before being in the translation business for instance, I used to think that using machine-aided translations meant inserting a bunch of text into a something similar to these Internet language tools, getting a literal quasi-incomprehensible mess and then having an editor or reviewer improve to an acceptable point. I thought that the machine would possibly jeopardize the sensibility and humanness of the translator, and consequently the overall translation quality.

It is true that many people think of machine-aided translations as such, even though for me it is far closer to a machine aided disaster. To me, a machine aided translation is one where the translator uses an interface such as Trados, to interact with a wide variety of stored terminology and sentences that provide agility and consistency that he would never have otherwise.

Trados uses translation memory. Translation memory means that every time a translator interprets a term or sentence, that gets stored in the translation memory and is offered as a possible translation the next time the translator comes across the same or extremely similar original segment.

Imagine for instance if each time the translator came across a key term (and that there might be 200 key terms in the text), the translator had to refer to a list. What are the chances of him missing a term? Or what are the odds of translating the title of a section one way in the table of contents and another way in the actual section title? These are common translation mistakes, and if they are not made, it means that the translator is spending a lot of time worrying about keeping consistency and homogeny that machine would have helped him do.

At the same time, if used incorrectly, the machine can be disastrous. Translating a section title or a key term wrong once, would very possibly mean that the term will be incorrect every single time. If the translator is not careful and does not see every re-occurrence as a chance to alter his first rendition of the term, results can be extremely negative. Read more in depth about this in “How the Implementation of Translation Memory Effects the Skill sets Appreciated in Translators”.