The paradigm shifts to automated translation

Over the past two years, there has been a definitive shift in the demand and perspectives on automated translation, despite the fact that statistical machine translation (SMT) was a new methodology that would change the paradigm for machine translation, back in the fall last year. While the government was seeing success with statistical MT, translators felt threatened, language service providers were skeptical at best, the commercial enterprise saw little value in what any type of MT could provide.
This year it is evident the dark cloud over automated translation is starting to lift. Companies approached several times in the past are now talkingout of their own free will; translators are opening up to the idea of working with SMT and automated translation is the new buzz. Why the change?
We see several factors that are contributing to the shift:

1. Global companies are feeling pressure to bring products to market faster, leading to greater demand for translation at lower costs
2. Microsoft has developed and successfully deployed its own version of statistically based translation software (SMT) to translate knowledge base content resulting in an increase in user satisfaction – truly a compelling argument to consider SMT!
3. Information is power – maybe a bit cliché, but exabytes of new digital data are being created annually and users want access to this information in their own language
4. More countries are coming “online” and the language of the internet continues to diversify. Users that speak languages other than English are beginning to dominate the web
5. Google keeps automated translation in front of web users with their own version of SMT.
   

Given these factors, it is clear that statistical MT can have a significant impact on global communications. So look out for more automatic translation software or online language translations this year.