Translated, a leading company in the translation industry, has developed Lara, an AI-based automatic translator. Although it is certainly not the first translation tool, it has been introduced as a service capable of translating 10 languages in real-time (and eventually 200) with an accuracy that in many cases surpasses human translation.
However, Marco Trombetti, co-founder of Translated, told Repubblica that their goal is not to replace human work, and AI translators will probably not replace human translators. The aim is to create a synergy between humans and machines.
Initially, the program provided translations that were then reviewed by human translators, refining Lara's output. Although this approach slowed down the process in the past, today Translated, through Lara, can translate massive volumes of content, such as 7 million listings and 700 million reviews for Airbnb, with human intervention limited to just 0.9% of the total.
According to Trombetti, in the future, languages will serve to help people learn about different cultures, while AI translators will be used solely for communication. This new vision might already hint at a shift in the role of human translators, moving away from the need for instant communication toward fostering cultural discovery of people and traditions.
The next version of Lara will be enhanced through collaboration with Cineca in Bologna and its supercomputer, and the Italian-English translation will be Open Source.
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