Machine translation is almost a solved problem
But interpreting meanings, rather than just words and sentences, will be a daunting task
Vasco Pedro had always believed that, despite the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), getting machines to translate languages as well as professional translators do would always need a human in the loop. Then he saw the results of a competition run by his Lisbon-based startup, Unbabel, pitting its latest AI model against the company’s human translators. “I was like…no, we’re done,” he says. “Humans are done in translation.” Mr Pedro estimates that human labour currently accounts for around 95% of the global translation industry. In the next three years, he reckons, human involvement will drop to near zero.
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This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “The Babel wish”
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