2 Which online machine translation (OMT)?
The animation in Section 1 explained how the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and its related tools are constantly changing, and improving. Today’s top translation websites (see below) use Neural Machine Translation to emulate human intelligence and aim to replicate complex sentence structures, slang, and even humour.
As well as specific translation websites, many browsers also offer the option to automatically translate content written in another language, which you will look at in more detail in Session 4.
There is a variety of tools you can use when you complete this course. We recommend you try different ones and compare their results, so that you can find out which one works best for your language and purpose.
Some of the most used online machine translation tools (OMT) that are freely available online are listed below. When accessing the links, it is best practice to open a new window or tab so you can easily return without having to use the back button in your browser. You can do this by holding down the ‘CTRL’ key (or CMD on a Mac) and left clicking the mouse button; or right click and ‘open in new tab’.
- Bing [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]
- DeepL
- Google Translate
- Systran
Activity 1
Translate into English one of the following sentences – or a sentence in another language you know – using each of the four OMT given above. Are there differences in the translations? In your opinion, which version conveys the meaning of the sentence best?
French: Ce garçon a beaucoup de trous dans ses études.
German: Sie sagt: „Es gibt einen Unterschied“.
Spanish: La recuerdo bien. Estaba en la Plaza, embarazoda de mi primer Hiba de 6 messe, Juan Pablo.