Effective communication across languages has become more critical than ever for businesses looking to expand their reach globally. However, they face the challenge of overcoming language barriers while maintaining high-quality, culturally relevant content. This is where AI comes into play, revolutionizing the translation industry and making it easier for companies to bridge the language gap.
Read on to learn how AI translation software can address these challenges and maximize your translation ROI. We'll explore what AI translation technology is, its various applications in the localization process, and how it’s breaking down language barriers and enhancing global communication.
What comes to mind when you hear the term “AI translation”? If machine translation (MT) does, you’re on the right track.
AI-powered translation also encompasses large language models (LLMs) and various other machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing (NLP) techniques.
As a result, AI has applications across the entire translation workflow, both before and after the translation stage.
AI, in the modern time and day, is a rapidly developing and constantly changing technology that has considerably impacted the evolution of translation software in recent years.
Important milestones of the AI journey include:
These advances have made AI-powered translation services faster, more accurate, and more fluent, often comparable to human translation. AI translation software can handle more complex linguistic structures, capture context and nuance, and produce natural-sounding output that reflects the original style and tone.
Here are a few use cases for AI in the localization process:
LLMs are trained on datasets that contain billions of parameters. For the NLP tasks, they’re able to identify linguistic patterns and semantic relationships. This enables them to understand and generate human language, which comes in handy for pre- and post-editing.
For example, Smartling's AI Translation Toolkit offers advanced features for pre- and post-editing that significantly improve translation quality and efficiency. The toolkit includes:
Neural machine translation (NMT) transformer models are a state-of-the-art machine translation approach. While large language models (LLMs) show promise in various language tasks, Smartling has found that traditional NMT engines, especially customized NMT engines, still outperform LLMs for content translation in most cases.
NMT engines consider the entire sentences’ context to translate words correctly. They can learn over time, which allows them to translate more accurately. Overall, they're better than their predecessors—statistical MT models—at language fluency and capturing the intended meaning of source text.
An example of advanced machine translation in action is Smartling's NMT Hub, which is a combination of cloud-based MT models. The NMT Hub uses AI to select the best MT engine for the language of your content, which results in the highest-quality MTs in a private and secure environment. Importantly, while the NMT Hub primarily leverages traditional MT engines for optimal results, it also offers the flexibility to use LLMs like Generative Pretrained Transformers (GPTs) for translation if a customer wishes to do so.
This adaptability ensures that Smartling can cater to various customer preferences and use cases while still recommending the most effective translation approach based on current performance data.
AI translation software has revolutionized how people communicate across language barriers, offering a range of benefits that traditional human translation services can't always match.
On any given day, your to-do list could include most or all of the following:
All of this can take a good amount of time when done manually, and you probably have other responsibilities, too. Incorporating AI into your processes is the key to freeing your time to focus on the highest-impact activities.
AI translation software has made language translation more accessible than ever before. Many tools offer free or low-cost options, putting powerful translation capabilities within reach of individuals and businesses of all sizes. This has opened up new opportunities for cross-cultural exchange, global collaboration, and market expansion.
AI-powered translation solutions empower you to translate large amounts of content instantly, helping you scale into new markets faster than manual translation could allow. The faster you can translate, the faster you can expand into new markets.
AI translation software can also help ensure consistency in terminology and style across translated content. By leveraging machine learning models trained on customer-specific data, these tools can produce translations that accurately reflect a brand's voice, industry jargon, and preferred phrasing. This is crucial for organizations that want to maintain a consistent brand identity globally.
As you can see, AI has extensive capabilities in powering translation workflows and ensuring efficiencies and cost-savings.
However, that doesn’t mean you should stop working with professional translators altogether.
In episode one of our Reality Series, Andrew Batwash, our associate director of language services, commented on the following:
“You can design AI [translation] systems to have effective and meaningful human intervention. What we want to do as a service provider in the language services space is really think about where the human comes into [the] human-in-the-loop system. [...] How do they add value? [...] And is it in the right place at the right time to generate the output that the customer is looking for? [...]
A lot of the conversation is [saying], ‘We're taking work away from translators, and we're going into this fully automatic world.’ [...] That's not really what it is. It's [going to be] something that’s more in the middle. Those systems, in a lot of ways, are going to help people be more productive.”
In part, progressive advancements in the functionality and reliability of AI tools used for translation work drive that human productivity advantage.
When choosing the AI translation software for your business, it is essential to understand your translation needs first. Of course, you’ll want a solution that strikes a good balance between quality, cost, and speed. But you should also consider the following:
Even with these factors in mind, it can still be hard to choose, because of the ever-increasing number of AI-powered tools out there.
Now that you have a better understanding of today’s AI translation space and its benefits, here are some AI-powered tools and services to look into.
Smartling is one of the most advanced AI-powered translation management systems (TMSs) in the localization industry, enabling you to leverage AI across the entire localization process. It’s also one of the most highly rated by customers—G2 rated it as the #1 pick for enterprise translation management for 20 quarters in a row.
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DeepL is one of the most reliable MT engines in terms of consistent translation quality. It has several advanced features that make maintaining high quality standards easier, such as the ability to choose from lists of alternative words and view definitions of words in both the source and target language. DeepL also integrates with Smartling as one of its MT models.
DeepL’s language translator (Source)
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Google’s Cloud Translation API is the enterprise-friendly sibling of Google Translate and has two editions. The Basic edition is mainly for short-form and user-generated content like social media content or chats. The Advanced edition is better suited for translating long-form content and performing various types of customization.
Smartling's platform allows for seamless integration with Google's Cloud Translation API, enabling you to leverage this machine translation service within your Smartling workflow.
Google’s Cloud Translation API translation process (Source: Google Cloud Translation API)
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ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, has revolutionized the AI landscape with its powerful language processing capabilities. While not primarily designed for translation, it has emerged as a versatile tool for various language-related tasks, including translation.
It offers impressive capabilities, and specialized translation tools often provide more robust and reliable solutions for business needs. For instance, Smartling Translate, a GPT-enabled, self-serve translation portal, delivers instant translations of text or documents.
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Thanks to the popularity of ChatGPT since its launch, GPT is one of the best-known classes of large language models. Others include LLaMA (developed by Meta) and PaLM (developed by Google), and there are many more from companies like NVIDIA and Hugging Face. Regardless of the class, though, many of the pros and cons of translation with any of these LLMs are the same.
On the positive side, large language models like GPT are cost-effective, especially in comparison to fully human-driven translation. Additionally, the best LLMs are fairly fluent in some language pairs. So, they may be useful for pairs like English to Spanish, where there’s more than likely a sizable amount of quality training data for both the source and target languages.
On the other hand, some LLMs only support very limited language pairs, so they are not a good fit for translation into uncommon languages or for large and complex projects where you need to rapidly translate into multiple and perhaps new languages. Besides this, LLMs, including GPT, can sometimes hallucinate and, ultimately, introduce factual inaccuracies or irrelevant details into text.
With all of the above in mind, which of these options should you choose? With Smartling, you don't have to limit yourself. Our comprehensive suite of AI-powered solutions goes beyond just integrating top MT engines and LLMs. You'll get high-quality translations while leveraging the industry's most powerful TMS and a host of innovative, proprietary AI features.
These benefits include our AI Translation Toolkit for enhanced efficiency, AI-Powered Human Translation (AIHT) for the perfect blend of speed and human-level quality, and the AI Translation Hub for data-driven insights. All of these work together to apply your brand terminology, style, and preferences while improving efficiency, reducing costs, and performing QA at every stage of your workflow.
Smartling is the leader in a world where AI-led translation is revolutionizing how millions of businesses approach their product and marketing needs. Our solutions can help you cut translation costs by up to 50% while maintaining human-quality output and accelerating your time-to-market.
Book a meeting today to learn how Smartling can transform your translation workflow and take your business to new heights in the global marketplace.