Losses and Gains in Computer-Assisted Translation: Some Remarks on Online Translation of English to Malay

摘要

The article begins with a concise study of the significance of the translation technology inrnmodern life as well as machine and computer-assisted translation. It then describes therntechnology accessible to translators and examines the losses and gains of the used tools inrncomputer-assisted translation such as the electronic dictionaries, and specifically Googlerntranslate. The paper studies the influence of the online dictionaries on the professional translatorrnwith a view to determining the extent translation done using such dictionaries can be accurate.rnLoss in machine translation is inevitable due to the differences between English and Malay asrnthey are entirely two different languages and not-related language pairs for translation. Thernonline dictionary and translation software cannot replace the human translator and guaranteernhigh-quality translations, despite their efficiency and outlooks. Online dictionaries and otherrntranslation means accelerate and facilitate the translation process only by minimizing thernexpected time for translation. Combination of electronic technologies with comprehensivernknowledge of the translator and translation theory may result in a high-quality translation.rnTranslation software and programs nonetheless, will not replace humans even in the future. Asrnmentioned, the main aim of the paper is to investigate the new technologies in machinerntranslation tools to discover the losses and gains in translation of English to Malay by usingrnonline dictionaries. Machine translations employing online dictionaries are compared with therntranslation done by a human translator to analyze the probable errors in machine-translatedrntexts.