A Literature review provides an essential building block to the development of any thesis. Not only does it provide a foundation of knowledge on a topic, but it also helps identify evidence to support and further the research, identify inconsistencies, and help avoid duplication. We live at the helm of technological advancement, where sharing information has become easier than ever. But, the question that we still need to answer is; does having information available mean that information is accessible?

 

Why Non-English Speaking Researchers require English Paper Translation?

Even though Marie Curie published her work in French, Einstein wrote his first influential papers in German, and Latin was the language in which Newton wrote the Principia Mathematica. Today English is the prevalent language when it comes to the dissemination of any research subject. According to data compiled by Scott Montgomery in his book, ‘Does science need a global language?’, more than three-quarters of scientific papers today are published in English (the number for some subject areas is more than 90%). For a non-English speaking researcher, this means not having access to more than three-quarters of research work, even though the information is available at the click of their fingers. English paper translation, thus becomes a necessity for such researchers.

 

How does the evolution of Machine Translation make Paper Translation more convenient for researchers?

Machine translation has come a long way since Warren Weaver first proposed the idea in 1949, and the translation industry has constantly strived to improve and meet client needs. The advent of Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is the latest step in the progression. Intended to mimic the neurons of a human brain, NMT’s neurons can learn and gather information, make connections, and evaluate input as an entire unit. For researchers who are not fluent in English but require English dissertation translations to access global research and lay the groundwork for their research, NMT provides an automatic and quick solution.

 

Why is the ease of English Paper Translation pivotal for global research?

It is fairly straightforward; one invention leads to another. Covid-19 is a testament to how collective and collaborative efforts are the blueprint for the way forward. Each research, whether successful or not, lays the path for successive future research work. For a researcher, to therefore have access to every research and be able to understand them becomes incredibly crucial, irrespective of their geography or language. With majority of the papers being published in English, Paper translation helps bridge the language gap. Machine translation provides a convenient option for researchers to translate and refer papers from any language and thus help them conduct an extensive literature review. It offers scope for researchers to have a broader range of reference material that could potentially help them improve their research output.

 

Will human and machine collaboration be the future for Paper Translation for researchers?

There is an ever-looming question of whether machine paper translation will someday trump human paper translation. Both human and machine translation come with their own sets of pros and cons. These pros and cons do complement each other in a lot of ways. Where human translation cannot match the economics and speed of machine translation, the latter is still not able to provide 100% accuracy and will falter to translate rare words or translate phrases according to subject area relevance. For a researcher, it would thus be beneficial to use both the resources in collaboration. Employing machine translation to quickly go through existing research work and engaging in the services of a professional translation agency when getting their paper translated for publishing in a journal would not only help them reduce expenses but also save time.