Essay

                               "Translators are bridges between language and culture".

Professional translators are trained to transfer the essence of a culture from one language to another. Although there are arguments in support of this, there is perhaps a stronger point of view that feels that using online translators web sites like Google, Babylon or Prompt, among others, is a simple, quick and free way to make a reasonable translation as will now be discussed.

Firstly, professional translators should have a deep knowledge of the source-language in order to encode accurately to the target-language. That is to say that they not only have to  know very well their own mother tongue and traditions but also the background of the language that they are going to translate into. Not to mention the fact that they need to be familiar with all varieties of the speech in both, source and target language.

Secondly, in translation that deals with literary texts it is quite common to find extensive description of feelings which online translation tools cannot identify as well as the professional translators do. In addition to this, a good translated document has to be reflected sensible feelings and sometimes the translation tools are unable to identify the real context of a sentence because the online translation tools may only manage no more than five synonyms of each word.

On the other hand, it is known that nowadays "time is money" so people are always in a hurry and the use of online translation tools is an opportunity for them to minimize their time  in the field of work or even at school. For instance, if somebody has to read a report in English and to send a review in his mother tongue just in a couple of days, he or she does not have time to recruit a professional translator to do it, so in this case, an online translator  is a useful and accessible  tool.

What is more, websites like Google, among other platforms, offer to people  friendly and easy applications for translation. For example, Google presents a page in which they can find, at least, five alternatives of translation and it is up to them to choose the right one. Moreover, related to technical translation these online translation tools act as a quick reference dictionary because there are not too many thesaurus for technical words.

In conclusion, I believe that professional translators are still irreplaceable because they have to have a lot of knowledge of both, the source of language and the target language, in order to make an accurate and relevant translation. To be a great translator involve, at least, four years of academic studies, to be a master in many subjects and also to be a sensitive language user.  

Susana Jamett Benitez