Hector Martin

A human does not use just the text. A human uses the full extent of shared consciousness, culture, current events, imagination, etc. Translation is a creative endeavour, not a mechanical one.

If you really think translation is just turning meaning from one language into another, you should try actually doing it some time. It's not that easy. People who have never translated anything serious often have no idea about just how hard it is.

Translating means understanding jokes and coming up with new ones in the target language. Translating means keeping in your head the full context of whatever you're translating and reasoning about it. Translating means knowing what is going to happen in the story in the *future*.

Have you ever read a professionally translated book? Ever encounter a pun? Do you think that came straight from the exact same pun in the original book? It didn't. The translator put that in, either as a replacement for a different pun that is untranslatable, or to fit the mood.

An AI that could do that might as well be human itself and be given human rights. Machine learning cannot do that, no matter how much you "train" it. You're taking about true Artificial Intelligence, which does not exist yet.