Over the years, translation has gone through many changes and since the surge of personal computers rapid changes have been made. The use of technology in translation work has become increasingly more important and the process has become more efficient. Only but a few centuries ago, the main mode of translation was through ink, quill pens and paper. Now, most translations take place on computers and the quantity of translations have sharply risen. Here are some of the benefits of technology on the modern translation industry.
The transition from hardcopies to electronic copies has greatly eased the lives of translators. Dictionaries can be one of the most significant things a translator can posses for their work; however, having a dictionary with hundreds of pages is not convenient and if there are multiple languages that need to be translated this can become a problem. Dictionaries are also not suitable to be taken anywhere and can be very heavy. In contrast, a computer-based dictionary can be accessed anywhere and save a lot of space. Electronic versions of dictionaries tend to be cheaper because there is no paper, no ink and no shipping. They reduce the amount of time to do research, speed up the process of searching for words and can be accessed from multiple platforms such as mobiles, laptops, tablets, etc.
The translation process involves research to make sure the translation is written in the appropriate context. Books, articles or newspapers might have to be consulted to create an appropriate translation. Before the internet, these resources would usually be accessed from the library and even then, there was no guarantee that the information could be found in the library. With access to the internet most research is no further than two or three clicks away. This a is time saving process for translators, and it also enhances the quality of the translation.
The internet as a whole has been revolutionary for the industry. The ability to do in-depth research and with such breadth in such a short amount of time is a great aid. The internet has also revolutionised the industry in a different way by providing more tasks to be translated. Traditionally, translations have come in the form of political, religious or literary texts; however, there are now a whole range of texts that have to be translated such as websites, computer software and subtitles for streaming services. With such a wide variety of content, there is a focus on the requirements of specific audiences in geographic and linguistic locales, often referred to as localization.
Bibliography
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d94d/9762153797d91049ed970993c935d893bc7a.pdf