Definition

Noun: 1. The use of computers to translate from one language to another: This refers to the automated process where software, without direct human intervention, converts text or speech from a source language into a target language.

Usage

• Machine translation is a field of computational linguistics.
• It is used to describe both the technology itself and the output it produces.
• The term is typically used in formal, academic, or technical contexts related to language technology, artificial intelligence, and localization.

Examples

• Noun:
  • Early machine translation systems produced very literal and often inaccurate results.
  • The company uses machine translation for initial drafts of technical documents.
  • Researchers are improving the quality of neural machine translation.

Advanced Usage

• "Rule-based machine translation (RBMT)": An older approach to machine translation that relies on a vast set of linguistic rules and bilingual dictionaries.
  • Rule-based machine translation can handle specific grammar structures well but requires extensive manual rule creation.
• "Statistical machine translation (SMT)": An approach that uses statistical models based on the analysis of large volumes of bilingual text data.
  • Statistical machine translation represented a major shift from rule-based systems.
• "Neural machine translation (NMT)": A modern approach using artificial neural networks to model the entire translation process in a single, integrated system.
  • Neural machine translation has significantly improved the fluency of automated translations.

Variants and Related Words

• MT: A common abbreviation for "machine translation."
• Automated translation: A near-synonymous term, sometimes used in less technical contexts.
• Computer-assisted translation (CAT): A related but distinct field where human translators use software tools to aid their work; it is not fully automated machine translation.

Synonyms

• Automated translation
• Automatic translation

Related Phrases

• Machine translation output: The text produced by a machine translation system.
  • The machine translation output still requires post-editing by a human.
• Machine translation engine: The core software system that performs the translation.
  • They licensed a powerful new machine translation engine for their website.
• Machine translation quality: A measure of the accuracy, fluency, and adequacy of the translated text.
  • Evaluating machine translation quality is a complex task.

Noun

1. the use of computers to translate from one language to another