Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a key part of many industries and its daily content-creation and localization activities. Thanks to AI technologies such as neural machine translation (NMT), and large language models like GPT , companies can produce content and localize it faster and in a more human-like way than ever before.
AI translation technology is opening doors for organizations to go global more quickly and cost-efficiently than ever before—whether it’s high-quality localized content, customer service chatbots, resonating social media posts or product documentation translated in a fraction of a time than it took merely a few months or years ago. Content which can be translated more quickly and accurately—and at a lower cost—makes AI translation technology a highly appealing feature to organizations.
In this blog, we’ll look at the four main benefits of using artificial intelligence in translation.
AI tools can produce accurate, human-like translations within a matter of seconds, can align existing translation memories, and convert partially translated content into fully translated content (100% matches)— none of which with any human input required. This way, linguists can focus on translating new segments only or on post-editing, taking content quality to the next level rather than spending time on manual, time-consuming tasks that don’t provide as much value.
With faster and higher-quality translations, organizations decrease their time-to-market. Faster time-to-market means companies can gain or maintain a competitive advantage by reaching customers more quickly, resulting in increased market share and potential revenue growth.
Machine translation engines take time to be trained, which means that post-editing tasks can be quite time-consuming until they’re at the desired level of quality. Large language models (LLMs) like GPT do not require this “training time” and can produce quality translations at the first attempt (zero-shot learning). This means that companies that leverage LLMs can obtain higher-quality translations from the get-go, without having to wait to train the machine-translation engine.
The most prominent question that has been floating around the language industry in the past 12-24 months is whether AI will be taking linguists’ jobs. The consensus seems to be that no, it won’t take linguists’ jobs but rather make them more productive. Increased productivity means that processes are going to be completed in less time, reducing expenses.
Producing high-quality localized content off the bat thanks to AI means that smaller-budget companies can go global without costs spiraling out of control. And companies who need to produce high volumes of localized product content in order to enter a new market (automotive, pharmaceutical, etc.) can do so in very little time and with minimal post-editing, if any.
As mentioned above, AI will enable linguists to be more productive with their time. While AI may take the first pass at translation, linguists will still be involved in the localization process and contribute to more value-added responsibilities.
Human linguists provide a level of accuracy that machines just cannot reach, even if it’s the 1% that allows localized content to reach 100% quality. In areas with specialized and complex terminology and concepts, such as legal, medical, and technical, human input is strictly necessary. Since the target content they receive from AI-generated translations will require less post-editing than before, humans can focus on working on the finer details that add the real value to localized content, making it better than ever before and in a fraction of the time.
AI translation technology is taking the translation process to another level of efficiency and speed. Given that AI has helped make translations faster and more accurate, companies need to take advantage of the technology if they want to remain competitive and stay ahead of the game across their global markets.
Tools like a translation management system (TMS) incorporate these AI technologies, and deploying this powerful localization technology enables companies to reap all the benefits mentioned in this blog post. With new AI technologies appearing on a regular basis, having a TMS does not only allow you to harness what’s available today, but also the technology of tomorrow.
We’d be delighted to help! Get in touch with us to discuss how your organization can make the most out of AI language technology, or watch our webinar on what the arrival of AI and GPT means for the present and future of language and localization.
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