人工翻译 or 机器翻译？这份来自欧盟的调查可能出乎你的预料

A survey of over 2,800 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) published by the European Commission revealed nearly 40% of respondents had not used a machine translation tool prior to the study.

欧盟委员会发布的一项针对2800多家中小企业的调查显示，近40%的受访者在这项研究之前没有使用过机器翻译工具。

Moreover, while an overwhelming majority of SMEs still preferred human translation for business activities, such as negotiating contracts and dealing with the public sector in another country, over 70% said machine translation was nonetheless useful for their business.

此外，虽然绝大多数中小企业在商务活动中仍然更喜欢人工翻译，如合同谈判和与其他国家的公共部门打交道等，但超过70%的中小企业表示，机器翻译对其业务还是有帮助的。

(图片来源：视觉中国)

The survey was conducted in line with the rollout of the Commission’s online machine translation service, eTranslation, to SMEs. First launched in November 2017, eTranslation was created for EU governments, universities, and projects under the Connecting Europe Facility, as well as SMEs.

该调查是在工商联向中小企业推出网上机器翻译服务“eTranslation”后进行的。eTranslation于2017年11月首次推出，面向欧盟政府、高校、欧洲互联基金下的项目以及中小企业。

Data gathering was done between December 2019 to March 2020 and led by DG CNECT with the help of DG GROW. (DG CNECT is the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology; DG GROW stands for Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs).

该调查采集了2019年12月至2020年3月的数据，调查由欧盟DG CNECT主要负责，由DG GROW协助处理。（DG CNECT是通信网络、内容和技术的总司；DG GROW是国内市场、工业、企业家和中小企业的总局。）

Prior to the publication of the complete survey results on June 9, 2020, Philippe Gelin, Head of Sector Multilingualism at the European Commission, discussed data from the survey during a stakeholder consultation in February 2020.

在2020年6月9日公布完整的调查结果之前，欧盟委员会多语言部门负责人菲利普﹒葛林于2020年2月举行的利益相关者咨询会上讨论了调查数据。

The survey garnered 2,868 responses from SMEs operating in Europe, majority of which were from the Manufacturing sector (28%), followed by Professional, Scientific, and Technical (11.7%), Other Services (11%), Wholesale and Retail (9.6%), and ICT (7.7%). Other sectors made up less than 5% of the total number of respondents.

调查收集了2,868份来自欧洲中小企业的反馈，其中大部分来自制造业(28%)，其次是专业、科学和技术领域(11.7%)、其他服务业(11%)、批发和零售行业(9.6%)和信息通讯技术行业(7.7%)。其他行业的受访者不到总受访者的5%。

Asked how many documents they expected to translate each month if they were provided with “free, secure, automated translation,” the majority of SME respondents said they would use machine translation (MT) on 3–10 documents (37%) or 11–50 documents (33%).

当受访者被问及如果提供“免费、安全、自动化的翻译”，他们期望每个月翻译多少文档时，37%的受访者表示每月会用机器翻译3-10份文件，33%的受访者表示每月会用机器翻译11-50份文件。

“This was later confirmed by the pilot testing [of eTranslation] which showed an average monthly usage of 5 documents per SME,” the study said. The Commission pilot tested eTranslation with 635 SMEs representing various sectors from 25 countries, and said “83% found eTranslation usable and 50% expected to use it every day or every week.”

该研究称，这一结果后来得到了[eTranslation]试点测试的证实。该测试显示，每个中小企业平均每月使用机器翻译5份文件。欧盟委员会对来自25个国家不同行业的635家中小企业进行了eTranslation试点测试，结果显示，83%的中小企业认为eTranslation可以利用起来，50%的中小企业预计每天或每周都会使用eTranslation。

The majority of SMEs regarded Social Media (80%), Gathering Information (70%), and Chatbots (60%) as the main use of MT. Most respondents preferred human translation when negotiating and signing contracts, resolving conflicts around commercial transactions, dealing with the public sector abroad, and even conducting marketing and promotional activities.

大多数中小企业认为机器翻译主要应用于社交媒体(80%)、信息收集(70%)和聊天机器人(60%)等方面。大多数受访者在谈判和签订合同、解决商业冲突、与国外公共部门打交道、甚至进行市场营销和促销活动时，更喜欢使用人工翻译。

When deciding whether or not to use MT, the most important factor for SMEs was Accuracy, followed by Ease of Use, Free of Charge, and Speed. Least important was Support.

决定中小型企业是否使用机器翻译的最重要因素是准确性，其次是易用性、是否免费和翻译速度。最不重要的因素是技术支持。

Europe’s SMEs also showed interest in language technologies other than MT, with Spell Check and Grammar Tools attracting the highest, and Speech Recognition drawing the least interest.

欧洲中小企业也对机器翻译以外的语言技术表现出了兴趣，拼写检查和语法工具最受欢迎，语音识别最不受欢迎。

Elaborating on this interest, a number of SMEs singled out features or tools as being necessary for business. These were “domain adaptation along with thematic dictionaries for various sectors (e.g., health, medical, food, maritime, ICT, chemical, legal, geoinformatics, plastic, cinema, advertisement, communication, creative industry); speech recognition tool (also for languages currently not supported by any provider); automated website translation; more languages for automated translation (e.g., Asian languages or Turkish).”

一些中小企业在表明这一兴趣时，特别指出了业务所必需的特点或工具，如“各领域适应化调整以及各领域（例如卫生，医疗，食品，海事，信通技术，化学，法律，地理信息学，塑料，电影，广告，通信，创意产业）的专题词典”；语音识别工具（也适用于任何供应商目前不支持的语言）；自动网页翻译；能自动翻译更多语言（如亚洲语言或土耳其语）。

SMEs said English, German, and French were the top three languages they needed followed by Spanish, Russian, Italian, and Chinese. Most of the SMEs surveyed came from France, Poland, and Portugal. According to the study, “the persity of the results [confirms] the broad European linguistic landscape, highlighting the continuous challenge the Single Market and especially its SMEs are confronted with.”

中小企业表示，英语、德语和法语是他们最需要的三种语言，其次是西班牙语、俄语、意大利语和汉语。大多数接受调查的中小企业来自法国、波兰和葡萄牙。根据这项研究，“结果的多样性[证实了]欧洲语言环境的广阔性，突出了单一市场，特别是其中小企业所面临的持续挑战。”

A free MT tool such as eTranslation would, therefore, place all businesses “on an equal footing, without penalising those working in languages with smaller populations or linguistic markets where language combinations may be harder or more costly to acquire.”

因此，像eTranslation这样的免费机器翻译工具将使所有的企业“处于平等的地位，而不会对那些在人口较少的语言或语言市场中工作的企业造成不利影响，因为原本在这些语言市场中，可能难以进行语言组合或组合语言的成本更高。”

Another survey has been scheduled for early 2021 to collect user experience data on and suggested improvements to eTranslation

另一项调查计划在2021年初收集用户体验数据，并提出改进eTranslation的建议。

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