Has "MT" become an online, cloud-only subscription service?
Thread poster: Tom Hoar (X)
Tom Hoar (X)
Tom Hoar (X)
United States
Local time: 05:37
English
Aug 16, 2019

Until roughly 2008, machine translation for professionals was only available as PC applications from companies like SYSTRAN and PROMT. Back then, the Babel Fish service from Yahoo! was the only (predominant?) free Web-based translation application and it was worse than anything available today.

Circa 2007, newer technologies like the Internet, machine learning and artificial intelligence started to become available. Technical limits of PCs (and greed and desire for control) drove ma
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Until roughly 2008, machine translation for professionals was only available as PC applications from companies like SYSTRAN and PROMT. Back then, the Babel Fish service from Yahoo! was the only (predominant?) free Web-based translation application and it was worse than anything available today.

Circa 2007, newer technologies like the Internet, machine learning and artificial intelligence started to become available. Technical limits of PCs (and greed and desire for control) drove machine translation applications online as subscription services. PC applications almost disappeared. It's my opinion this migration to the cloud caused most of the problems that translators continue to experience with MT today.

Today, people talk about machine translation as though it's exclusively a cloud-based service. Has that become the case? If it's not in the cloud, is it something other than machine translation?
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Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 10:37
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Tom Aug 18, 2019

Tom Hoar wrote:
PC applications almost disappeared. It's my opinion this migration to the cloud caused most of the problems that translators continue to experience with MT today.


And what are those problems?

Today, people talk about machine translation as though it's exclusively a cloud-based service. Has that become the case?


No, but services that you can access via the internet can be cheaper and can reach a wider audience. When you use Google Translate online, you can do so without the hassle of downloading and installing something. The pricing model also makes it seem cheaper: pay per word for Google Translate.


Tom Hoar (X)
 
Hans Lenting
Hans Lenting
Netherlands
Member (2006)
German to Dutch
No need to train Aug 19, 2019

Samuel Murray wrote:

No, but services that you can access via the internet can be cheaper and can reach a wider audience. When you use Google Translate online, you can do so without the hassle of downloading and installing something.


Also: you don’t need to train the MT system with your own data.

Another big advantage of online systems can be that these can point you to the right terminology – terminology that isn't present in the training data of your own, local MT system. Of course, you'll always have to verify the correctness of the suggestion (since these online MT systems like to make up words), but it can be a time saver.



[Edited at 2019-08-19 05:28 GMT]


Tom Hoar (X)
 


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Has "MT" become an online, cloud-only subscription service?







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