Embracing Technology-Driven Language Solutions Personal | Professional | Precise
Dixon Associates is embracing the rapid development of machine translation and AI systems by offering a growing range of AI-powered services tailored to meet evolving client needs.
As technology continues to advance, we recognise the potential of artificial intelligence to support and enhance the work of our professional linguists.
These tools are not designed to replace human expertise, but to complement it – improving efficiency, streamlining workflows and increasing overall productivity. Our goal is to integrate AI and machine translation systems responsibly into projects for which they are suitable. This enables us to harness the speed and scalability of AI, backed by the accuracy, cultural sensitivity, and contextual understanding that only experienced human linguists can provide.
At Dixon Associates, we remain committed to innovation without compromise – ensuring our clients benefit from cutting-edge technology while retaining the quality and reliability they expect from us.
Machine Translation vs AI-powered Translation Tools
Machine translation engines are purely mechanical translation tools – using their built-in databases and algorithms to automatically and almost instantly translate texts. Popular examples include Google Translate and DeepL, although many others are also available. These tools started to gain popularity around the same time as computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools, but their reliability has been quite poor until fairly recently. They nonetheless remain an extremely useful tool in a translator’s toolkit, but their output always needs to be thoroughly edited by a qualified, experienced linguist to bring it up to professional publication quality.
Whereas traditional machine translation systems rely solely on their built-in resources to produce translations, AI-powered translation tools pull information from multiple other sources, including bespoke translation memories, glossaries and style guides. Their output is generally of a much higher quality than machine translation, and the results can typically be customised to add specific rules, restrictions or requirements for an individual project or client. The one major downside to AI-powered systems is that, unlike machine translation, the data they use to produce the translation is often not pre-approved by their developers, and instead piece together translations from segments of text retrieved from unreviewed sources. As a result, although the errors made by AI translation are typically less serious than machine translation, they can be more difficult to spot. This means that texts translated by both machine translation and AI must be carefully edited by an experienced linguist before being published.
Responsible, Professional Use of AI and Machine Translation
Unless the translation is purely for your own personal reference or to enable surface-level comprehension, it is generally not sufficient to simply run a document through a machine translation engine or AI translation system without any human input. The results will almost always contain errors, many of which will be difficult or impossible to identify for someone is not a trained professional linguist. For example, it is possible that a machine translation system could translate the phrase ‘I drink from glasses, not plastic cups’ into French as ‘Je bois dans des lunettes et non dans des gobelets en plastique’ – however, ‘lunettes’ means ‘spectacles’, not ‘drinking glasses’.
In professional contexts, the output from AI and machine translation tools should always be edited by a professional linguist to bring them up to a publication standard. This is a specialist task and requires training and experience to identify the errors commonly made by these systems. At Dixon Associates, we have a team of expert post-editors of machine translation and AI translation and offer a range of service options that allow you to benefit from the increased efficiency that these systems provide, without compromising on quality.
Other AI-powered Services
As AI technology continues to improve, many other uses and tools are emerging. We are embracing this innovation and are now offering various other AI-powered services in addition to translation.
AI Transcription
Transcription of speech into writing can now be done with a high level of precision by AI-powered technology at a fraction of the time and cost of a human transcriptionist. While it may be faster and cheaper, most transcription applications require additional formatting and checks that must be performed by a human linguist, such as adding time-codes and speaker names, or correcting spellings of brand and product names. Dixon Associates offers transcription services that are produced initially by AI and then thoroughly edited by a professional human transcriptionist to ensure the highest quality and accuracy.
AI Voiceover
A very recent innovation, AI voiceover can now be produced with relative ease. The results are usually instantly identifiable as AI, and so are not considered to be particularly professional, but may well be sufficient in low-impact circumstances or when budgets are very tight. We can localise your video content by providing AI voiceover in many languages.
Revision of AI-generated Text
There are various AI engines that can produce novel content from prompts provided by the user. Like AI voiceover, AI-generated text and images are usually instantly identifiable as AI-generated and so are not usually of publication quality. We offer monolingual revision and proofreading services that can transform your AI-generated text into professional content that is consistent with any specific glossaries, style guides or previous content.
To find out more about how we can help you, speak to one of the team today by phone on +44 (0)1952 288 230 or by email to info@dixon-associates.co.uk
