• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.239-244
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• 2022

Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is gradually breaking down the boundary between human and machine translation. We look at actual cases of human and machine translation and discuss why machine translation needs a human touch. In this paper, we raise three driving questions: Can humans be replaced by machines?; How human translators can remain successful in a NMT-driven world?; Is it possible to eliminate language barrier in the era of NMT and World Englishes? The answers to these questions are all negative. We suggest that machine translation is a useful tool with rapidity, accuracy, and low cost productivity. However, the machine translation is limited in the areas of culture, borrowing, ambiguity, new words and (national) dialects. The machines cannot imitate the emotional and intellectual abilities of human translators since machines are based on machine learning, while humans are on intuition. The machine translation will be a useful tool that does not cause moral problems when using methods such as back translation and human post-editing. To conclude, we propose the blended approach that machine translation cannot be completed without the touch of human translation.