The Slow March Towards Machine Interpretation
With the growth in Artificial Intelligence, there is now endless debate and speculation about it’s impact upon the job’s market with the range of discussion moving from the outright gloomy through to the joyful acceptance of the changes that will come about.
Nowhere has the debate raged more than in the Language Services Industry but now two useful reports have now been published providing a global perspective on the AI and Machine Interpretation (MI).
The first is the 2024 Nimdzi 100 report which, for those interested in a well reasoned and comprehensive look at current trends in the language industry, can be downloaded for free here.
What’s clear from this report is that the cat is already out of the bag as far as the translation and localization sector within the industry is concerned, where it predicts that many small businesses, including tech providers, will struggle in the new AI era and sell or close business.
Regarding the Machine Interpreting (MI), it seems it is presently trying to find and open new markets instead of providing direct competition to human interpreting – at least for the time being. Experts in the field generally agree that MI is not yet accepted for deployment in more critical and regulated market segments, and the human Interpreting will continue to be a growth driver.
The Nimdzi team draws attention to the second of the two reports – The SafeAI Survey - which again can be downloaded for free here.
The title "Perceptions On Automated Interpreting" is revealing but put together the two reports begin to bring common sense reality to bear.
Nimdzi 100 recognises that ‘ the need for accurate communication increases in times of crisis, such as war, immigration and personal health issues” and the Safe AI survey points out the concerns that those contacted have about MI with regard to accuracy, poor delivery, lack of accountability, increased cost among the many issues identified.
As specialists in Interpreting Services, we at Ablio, have not been burying our heads in the sand and have been looking at ways in which Machine Interpretation might enhance our offering. Whilst we acknowledge that advances are being made at quite a pace there are still too many issues as described in the Safe AI survey to be resolved before it can match the quality that we can provide our valued clients.
We will keep you posted as we keep monitoring the situation and investing our R&D resources in exploring the potential of Machine Interpretation.
Using state-of-the-art IT & telecommunication technologies, Ablio makes language interpretation services easily available to everyone, in any context, by creating tools and service platforms that are supported by its own community of live interpreters.
For further information please visit our websites:
ablio.eu - General Website
ablio.com - OPI Platform
ablioconference.com - Simultaneous Interpreting Platform