The Real Question in Translation — How to Balance the Accuracy of Machine Translation with the Creativity of Human Translation?

Abstract

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and machine learning, machine translation has made remarkable progress in accuracy and speed, and has become a powerful tool for learning languages in the context of globalization. At the same time, however, machine translation still has certain limitations in handling complex language structures, cultural differences, and contextual understanding, so the intervention of human translation is necessary. This study aims to explore how to give full play to the creativity of human translation while ensuring translation accuracy and speed, so as to achieve a balance between machine translation and human translation. It first reviews the historical development of machine translation and human translation, their advantages and disadvantages, and their application in different fields, and discusses the advantages and limitations of machine translation in terms of accuracy and speed, as well as the unique creativity of human translation. The study finds that machine translation is relatively standardized when processing large amounts of textual content, but human translation has a more prominent advantage when it comes to literary or other highly specialized texts. To address this issue, this study proceeds from four strategies: 1. hybrid translation mode; 2. post-editing; 3. customized machine translation; 4. creative intervention of human translation, so as to achieve an effective balance between machine translation and human translation.