Computer-Assisted Translation or CAT as we like to call it has been around for a while and like everything in computing has been improving. However, the devastating effects of COVID-19 on the majority of businesses have ramped up the need for reliable machine translation.
It has also meant that businesses that would otherwise rely on humans for things like customer service, now need to rely on bots heavily. So, bots need not only to come across as being helpful to a user who needs help but also understand multiple languages. Fortunately, the latest trends in CAT is making this and a lot more possible.
Computer-Assisted Translation is Now Smarter
Thanks to the implementation of AI, computer-aided translation, or CAT is now smarter than it ever was before. Machines can now do a pretty good job translating tenses and identifying names. So, a lot of the problems caused because the machine was translating names, locations and planets is no longer the case.
AI has also made it possible to identify colors in different languages, idioms and other bits of a common language that it once tried hard to translate albeit incorrectly. However, CAT isn’t going to be a match for a human translator anytime soon, but it is certainly much more helpful than it once was.
CAT on Mobile Devices
Now Computer Assisted Translation apps have been on mobile devices for a while, but they weren’t quite there. The apps were slow, and the translation was way off even compared to their brethren running on desktop or cloud computers. However, that’s all changing as mobile processors are becoming more powerful, and with the addition of more RAM machine translation is improving.
AI has also made its way to mobile translation apps. The AI system, some of which is still in beta uses the onboard AI chips on some high-end mobile devices to improve translations. The results aren’t great at the moment, but we are hopeful that it will improve with time.
Will Multi-Lingual Bots Replace Human Translators and Customer Service People?
One of the questions people in the translation industry often ask is if these bots will take away their jobs. The truth is that bots are not going to take over the job of customer service people or human translators for that matter. Bots are used as a way to qualify a visitor to the website or service before they sent to a human being. So, it reduces the time a human being would have to spend on handling the client or customer.
Translators will still be needed to make sure that the correct version of the bot’s language directory is being used. Also, who’s going to create that language directory? Obviously, it will be human translators.
What about customer service people? Businesses will still need a lot of customer service people, the only difference being that these professionals may not have to field as many calls and online chats when the bots are intelligent enough to answer most regular questions.