Machine translation is software, usually a machine learning model, that turns text in one human language into another.
In plain words
Machine translation lets software translate between human languages, and today it is usually done with a machine learning model. The Transformer, the design behind today's large language models, was first shown working on translation, from English into German and from English into French.
A quick example
You type a sentence in English and ask for Japanese. The model reads the whole sentence, works out its meaning and writes a Japanese sentence that says the same thing, rather than swapping word by word.
Where you'll meet it
- Translation apps and website translation.
- Subtitles and multilingual customer support.
Related
Sources
- Docsmachine translation, Google Machine Learning Glossary · read 29 Sept 2026
- PaperAttention Is All You Need, Vaswani et al. (arXiv) · read 29 Sept 2026
Checked by WhatIsAI against the sources above · 29 Sept 2026. Spotted an error? Report it.