Human and Machine Translators Join Hands.docVIP

Human and Machine Translators Join Hands 　　Having recently won 60 consecutive Go games， AlphaGo， the artificial intelligence（AI） program created by Google， has once again raised the question of whether AI will one day surpass human intelligence. An updated version of the program registered as a player on online board game platforms in China and defeated a series of elite players. 　　Machine translation （MT）， an implementation of AI， is gaining momentum in China. At the China Language Service Industry Conference， organized by the Translators Association of China （TAC） in Beijing in December 2016， tech company executives and computer scientists discussed the possibility of MT replacing human translation. 　　“I don’t think MT will replace human translation. This is probably not the future trend and is not what we as researchers hope for. The ideal situation should be to use machines to aid translators and improve the speed of translation，” said Xiao Tong， a professor of Northeastern University located in Shenyang， Liaoning Province， who specializes in MT research. 　　 Developments 　　MT has made strides in China in recent years， with both large tech companies such as Baidu， Tencent and Alibaba， and smaller ones coming up with products. 　　Baidu， for instance， launched Baidu Translate in 2011 and incorporated neural machine translation （NMT） into the service in 2015. Compared with previous statistical translation methods， which separated sentences into components to be translated， the system consists of a large neural network， which sees each sentence as a whole and is therefore able to derive a more fluent and accurate translation. 　　Now Baidu Translate supports 28 languages， and the company has also developed an app which translates written and spoken words and produces output in readable and audible forms. Using the app， people lacking a common language can communicate without the help of an interpreter. 　　E-commerce giant Alibaba， meanwhile， started to delve