Concept

Machine translation

Overview

Machine translation is the use of computational techniques to translate text or speech from one language to another, including the contextual, idiomatic, and pragmatic nuances of both languages.

While some language models are capable of generating comprehensible results, machine translation tools remain limited by the complexity of language and emotion, often lacking depth and semantic precision. Its quality is influenced by linguistic, grammatical, tonal, and cultural differences, making it inadequate to replace real translators fully. Effective improvement in translation quality requires understanding of target society's customs and historical context, and human intervention and visual cues remain necessary in simultaneous interpretation. On the other hand, domain-specific customization, such as for technical documentation or official texts, can yield more stable results, and is commonly employed in multilingual websites and professional databases.

Initial approaches were mostly rule-based or statistical in nature. However, these methods have since been superseded by neural machine translation and large language models.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it. The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellences, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.
René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences
States what Machine translation is; the author is tied to Machine translation in the knowledge graph.
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And we ought not to confound words with naturall motions, which witness passions, and may be imitated by Machines aswell as by Animals; nor think (as some of the Ancients) that beasts speak, although we do not understand their language: for if it were true, since they have divers organs which relate to ours, they could aswell make themselves understood by us, as by their like. Its likewise very remarkable that…
René Descartes, A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences
The author is tied to Machine translation in the knowledge graph.
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But this simplification of languages, though it arises, perhaps, from similar causes, has by no means similar effects with the correspondent simplification of machines. The simplification of machines renders them more and more perfect, but this simplification of the rudiments of languages renders them more and more imperfect, and less proper for many of the purposes of language; and this for the following reasons.
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
Close in meaning to Machine translation; the term itself is not named.
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Philosophers who discussed Machine translation

Lin Yutang

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Logic translation.

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