5.5.2 The limits of computer translation
One advantage of using translating software is that it can deal with many more languages than any human ever could, and it can translate between them extremely quickly. In the early days of machine translation there was much excitement about the possibilities, but also some worry that eventually computers would replace human translators.
Activity 43
Complete the following statements about the advantages and limitations of machine translation.
Online translators are constantly improving as they access an ever-larger corpus of (human-generated) translations. As mentioned previously, this is why tools such as Google Translate work better for frequently translated languages, such as French, than for languages such as Urdu, where the corpus of translations is much smaller. Even so, quirky and unusual turns of phrase will continue to be a problem for translation software. Judging to what extent ‘equivalence of meaning’ has been achieved in a translation should always be left to a human language expert.
OpenLearn - Exploring languages and cultures 
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