Current trends in technical translation

The demand for technical translation is increasing throughout the world and is leading to extensive developments in word-processing equipment and in new international networks for the exchange of information about translation technology. The problems in the way of machine translation are seen to be formidable. First, all living languages are changing constantly, and the higher the technology the greater the rate of change. Moreover, the translation of any text more complex than a parts list requires the restatement, in the target language, not only of the terms, but of the ideas in the original text. This is often beyond the capabilities of the machines, but after some 40 years of developmental work in many centers where linguistics scientists and computer designers are cooperating, great progress has been made. It is clear, however, that the machine translation will not replace human translators in the foreseeable future. Particular attention is given to modern active machine translation (MT) systems and to MT in Japan.<>