Machine translation is the translation of text by a computer, with no human involvement. Pioneered in the 1950s, machine translation can also be referred to as automated translation, automatic or instant translation.

There are two types of machine translation system: rules-based and statistical:

- Rules-based systems use a combination of language and grammar rules plus dictionaries for common words. Specialist dictionaries are created to focus on certain industries or disciplines. Rules-based systems typically deliver consistent translations with accurate terminology when trained with specialist dictionaries.

- Statistical systems have no knowledge of language rules. Instead they "learn" to translate by analysing large amounts of data for each language pair. They can be trained for specific industries or disciplines using additional data relevant to the sector needed. Typically statistical systems deliver more fluent-sounding but less consistent translations.

The benefits of using Machine translation are the following ones:

Increased productivity – deliver translations faster

- Use freely available machine translation to pre-translate new segments that are not leveraged from translation memory.

- As a translator, you can connect to and use a customer's or supplier's trained SDL Enterprise Translation Server or SDL BeGlobal machine translation system to deliver even faster.

Flexibility and choice – to suit all types of project

- Select from 3 different machine translation engines

- Choose from over 50 languages and more than 2,500 language pairs to suit your project

- Compare rules-based and statistical machine translation engines

Source: http://www.translationzone.com/products/machine-translation/