Automatic translation: opportunity or threat?
Abstract
For many years, linguistic technologies have fallen short of the expectations of Basque speakers. In comparison with other “stronger” languages, we have suffered considerable limitations and obstacles in obtaining a corpus in order to automatically process oral texts, in order to achieve correct automatic translations, etc. The characteristics of the Basque language itself contributed to these difficulties, as did the scarcity of primary materials for the linguistic technologies in question. Nevertheless, in recent years we have advanced significantly in language technologies and especially in automatic translation. Using technologies based on neural networks, we have obtained high quality results in systems that translate from Basque into Spanish and vice versa. This of course entails changes in the activity of professional translators: opportunities and threats. Both must be taken into account because they will determine the language of the future.
