Journalistic Mobile Translation: Success or Failure?"

I. Abstract Mohammad, M., Farhat, A., Hamade, K., Hashem, R. (2013) in the paper entitled " Journalistic Mobile Translation: Success or Failure?" describes the technology available to translators in the first decade of the present century and examines the negative and positive aspects of mobile translation vs. human translation in the domain of journalism. The importance of this technology in discussed based on the idea of devices such as smartphones and tablets providing means for agencies to deliver language capabilities to users anywhere in the world. These ubiquitous devices can easily serve as platforms for translation programs, as a growing number of agencies are equipping personal with mobile devices and translation software that allow them to more efficiently complete their mission, especially as the arena of media deals with languages around the world. I. Commentary Introduction It is an undeniable fact that the globalization brings us to the modern effects such as the invention of mobile phones (MP). Just a couple years ago, we only had simple mobile phone’s application, such as VGA camera, a very limited scope of radio, and improved, in such a way that as a journalist, the target language can be obtained by simply vocally speaking. A- Endorsement Mobile translation is a machine translation service for hand-held devices, including mobile telephones, Pocket PCs, and PDAs. It relies on computer programming in the sphere of computational linguistics and the device's communication means (internet connection or SMS) to work. Such device users are equipped with the advantage instantaneous and non-mediated translation from one human language to another, usually against a service fee that is, nevertheless, significantly smaller that a human translator charges. In the chosen articles above, a significant and very basic role pg Google translation is noticed, that is, in this case the concise translation of general and commonly used proper nouns. For instance, in the article written by Thierry Meyssan, the term "Republican Congress" was translated into "الكونغرس" and it was taken as a proper noun where the first letter of each word is capitalized. Another example on that is the term "United Nations" which was translated directly into "الامم المثحدة". This shows the importance of the mobile translation in terms of accuracy in translating proper and widely known official terms. B- Refutation While many commercial mobile translation options are effective, they often cannot provide the capabilities or security levels that media agencies require. Most text-based mobile machine translation solutions call out to unsecured servers in the cloud over unencrypted phone lines, a serious issue for translating sensitive data. However, the most important challenge facing the mobile translation industry is the linguistic and communicative quality of the translations, although some providers claim to have achieved an accuracy in "understanding" idioms and slang language, machine translation is still distinctly of lower quality than human translation and should be used with care if the matters translated require correctness. III. Recommendation After viewing and researching the above points, on the different and common points between these two very competitive types of translation, the following can be recommended: • Do not utilize without a post-editing stage • Always remember the customer not the budget • A translator should also be objective in his translation so that his personal point of view will not influence the purpose of the main text. • Translators need to accept the new technologies and learn how to use them to their maximum potential as a means to increased productivity and quality improvement. • Utilizing TM software provides users with quick and easy access to a wide array of formats without the need for ownership of the software. • When users employ the likes of TM software for rather large projects, the undertaking is made easier by way of increased savings(time, expense, energy). Thus, there may or may not be a need to translate subsequent versions of large projects. • Users must update their mobile translation software as soon as a new update appears. • Provide more classes on the relations between machine and human translation and more training sessions on the use of the different translation software. IV. Conclusion After comparing the human translated documents with that of the machine, we can deduce that any attempt to replace Human Translation would certainly face failure due to a simple reason; there is no machine translation that is capable of interpreting, beautifying and making the text easy to understand while translating. For instance, it is only the human translator who is able of interpreting certain cultural components that may exist in the source text and that cannot be translated in terms of equivalent terms, just like what automatic translation does, into the language of the target text. In addition, it is widely agreed upon that one of the most difficult tasks in the act of translation is how to keep the same effect left by the source text in the target text. Machine translation, in this regard, has proved its weakness when compared with a human translation. The human translator is the only subject in a position to understand the different cultural, linguistic and semantic factors contributing to leaving the same effect that is left in the source text, in the target text. V. References Shwartz, K. (2013). Fed Tech Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.fedtechmagazine.com. Hermen, J. (2011). Mobile Translation and Its Advantages. Retrieved from http://justinhermen.blogspot.com