Translation and Technology    
                                                                                     
The assertion of the translator’s individuality is however restricted to the academic or literary fields. The domain of the professional translator gives us a different story. This is a field that is impacted by rapidly developing technology, an aspect that we have already discussed with respect to computer-aided or machine translation. Technological developments have affected other aspects of translation besides the actual process of translation. Computers and rapid systems of communication like the email and fax have revolutionized the nature of a translator’s work.  A majority of freelance translators, especially of non-literary material, can afford to work from home today, provided they own a PC and other accessories that are indispensable to their work. Cronin points out how the “new world of electronically mediated environments where networks are everywhere will produce its own zones of privilege and exclusion” (107). Moreover, by shifting the work of the translator from the space demarcated as the office to the private sphere of home, what is happening is the “deterritorialization” of translation activity (107). This means that the translator is free to determine her employer, working hours and workspace. This freedom however is but an illusion because it rests on the “inbuilt obsolescence of time-based technologies” (107). The other problem with the speed of communication of material to be translated is the expectation of near-instantaneous delivery of the translation. Translators are expected to meet unrealistic deadlines, as they have machine aids at their disposal. This divide between the transmission of material and the time required to translate is never given due recognition by the translation users. Cronin underlines this divide between ‘transmission time’ and ‘processing time’ (109). Rapid developments in technology do not really lighten the translator’s workload primarily because the decision making process mainly rests on human agency. Cronin sums up the problem: “In effect, the human processing of texts in human time that have originated from other human beings producing text in time is increasingly hidden or annulled by the technology of delivery, so that the time values are those of the machine not of the human being” (109). There is in fact a privileging of the machine over human beings. In fact, many tasks that were previously done by human beings are now done by the computer leading to the coinage of the term ‘cerebrofacture’ (mechanization of certain intellectual tasks) as opposed to manufacture (qtd in Cronin, 113).

While it is true that machine aids have speeded up the process of translation, what it unfortunately downplays is the human factor that is still important in the activity of translation. It obscures the fact that the success of the process of translation does not always ensure desirable outcomes. As Cronin points out, “The fact that there were no translation problems did not prevent the Americans and the Soviets from holding different points of view on a variety of subjects from Afghanistan and Cambodia to Cuba and El Salvador” (119). A right balance has to be struck between man and machine, without succumbing either to the euphoric predictions of a completely mechanized translation process or to the dire warnings of doomsday by technophobes.