Calling to mind the man versus machine theme of The Terminator films, President Obama’s call for increased investment in machine translation has created the latest flurry in this rapidly evolving market sector.

• BusinessWeek commented on Obama’s call to action in its Innovation section, citing Common Sense Advisory data on the demand for information in local language. This article highlighted the benefits of post-edited machine translation in increasing the volume of translated information while lowering the cost
• The American Translators Association weighed in, with president Jiri Stejskal noting that “both translation software and qualified human translators are vital to [Obama's] goal of achieving language security. Today all the leading proponents of computer translation recognize that human beings will always be essential, no matter how sophisticated translation programs become.”
• CNN joined the fray, asking “who’s the better translator, Machines or humans?” and pitting Facebook‘s crowdsourcing approach against Google‘s machine translation. The article cites the pros and cons of each model, coming down solidly on the side of “no decision.”

Based on our recent members-only research on the use of and business case for machine translation, the technology is at a turning point. Corporations and government agencies seem more willing than ever to give MT a chance, but many are hedging their bets by mitigating quality concerns with post-editing and narrowly scoped applications, such as technical support. Without a doubt, more automation will be critical to companies and government increasing the volume of words they translate, with and without human assistance.

Obama’s call to action certainly struck a nerve in the language industry — now we’ll wait to see whether any R&D funds and other government assistance materialize to back up the initiative.