(Photo: File)

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology will eventually engage with the language service industry, which will improve the industry, according to a report published by the Translators Association of China (TAC).

Domestic and foreign experts on translation participated in the TAC Conference 2018 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up at the Beijing International Convention Center on Monday.

"The Chinese translation industry helps China communicate with the world, while helping the world understand the Chinese story and values, and can be considered a necessary bridge between China and the world," TAC president Zhou Mingwei said at the conference's opening ceremony.

On innovations in the language service, experts said that adopting AI, like speech recognition technology, in translation will be the trend, as AI can improve the efficiency of translation and upgrade the industry's structure.

"We will concentrate on advancing the industry's information technology, and establish professional, standardized as well as multilingual AI translation platforms," Fang Zhenghui, Vice President of the China International Publishing Group, said.

However, some experts said there's a shortage in AI-powered translation machines. Alan Melby, vice president of the International Federation of Translators, noted that most translations made and used on a given day are raw machine translations, which are unpredictable and usually of low quality.  He said translators can understand the source, but machines cannot.

Liao Changsheng, a professor specializing in translations at Gannan Normal University, told the Global Times on Monday that AI technology has not been very popular in the industry, because "machine translations cannot replace people. They can only perform simple tasks."