| People who need documents translated often ask themselves whether
they could use a computer to do the job.
When a computer translates an entire document automatically and
then presents it to a human, the process is called machine
translation. When a human composes a translation, perhaps
calling on a computer for assistance in specific tasks such as
looking up specialized words and expressions in a dictionary,
the process is called human translation.
There is a gray area between human and machine translation, in
which the computer may retrieve whole sentences of previously
translated text and make minor adjustments as needed. However,
even in this gray area, each sentence was originally the result
of either human translation or machine translation. We will reserve
the label "machine translation" for the case when both the initial
translation of the sentences and subsequent manipulations are
performed by a computer. All else we will call "translator tools".
|
