In addition to their internal communication needs, many businesses need to communicate with customers overseas. Some texts are perishable. News feeds, web pages and e-mails can lose their relevance rapidly over time, and often change frequently. The amount of time it can take to obtain a human translation of Internet content often exceeds the useful life of the information. For customer support requests through e-mail, a response must be generated very quickly.
Human translators produce polished, publication-quality translations of documents.
Often, with Internet content, only a rough draft is necessary to enable the reader to understand the gist of the document, or to determine whether it is relevant to their needs. The Challenges of Real-Time Translation Applications Development of most automatic translation software began in the 1960's and 1970's, long before the advent of the Internet. The various technologies have individual strengths and weaknesses that must be compared carefully to determine their ability to provide satisfactory translations of networked communication. At that time, translation software was intended mainly as a tool for increasing the productivity of human translators. Translation technology was developed to produce a rough draft translation that would then be edited by a human translator to improve quality.