In the last two blog posts we have talked about the characteristics of human translation and machine translation. Today we want to offer a direct comparison of the two variants.
Translating texts quickly on the Internet
Who hasn't done that? You surf the net, looking for information or the like and you find a text in another language.
Mostly in English, but sometimes also in other languages. If you do not know the language, you will be forced to translate the text. For this most people use online translators, such as the Google translate or similar. If only rudimentary aspects of understanding are involved, the use of one of the automatic online translators is a reasonable choice. Although the results are not always grammatically correct, if you want to understand the text roughly, it is usually sufficient. Among the new competitors growing in recent years alongside the well-known Google translate there’s DeepL, which also translates texts into different languages fully automatically. These tools are getting better and better and they constitute a valid option when a professional translator is not affordable or simply not needed for the level of understanding required by a given situation.
Chatting in other languages
You may have had to contact support for a product that is only available in English. Or you had to exchange written information with someone who does not speak your language. You may find words or even entire sentences difficult to understand. To look them up quickly, automatic translators are not bad, especially since the different meanings of a word are always listed as well. As long as it is not a matter of operating an extremely expensive machine, a computer translator should be sufficient and provide good service here.
Seriousness
Today many companies are internationally active. Of course, a linguistically adapted website should be available for each country in which the company operates. Nevertheless, you come across webpages, often from large companies, which were only translated very clumsily. They seem to have been translated by a machine. And this happens why it often depends on the context: some words have different meanings in other languages, depending on the context. Automatic translators often struggle context. As a result, automatically translated texts on websites usually contain many errors and sound totally unnatural. This is at the expense of the company's credibility. The trust in the brand therefore declines and potential customers are lost. Such sensitive contents should rather be edited by a professional translator!
Medical documents and legal texts
Trust and professionalism play such an important role in a few sectors such as medical documents and legal texts. Absolutely no mistake must be made here. One word wrongly translated in a defibrillator manual can cost a life, one mistake in a translated legal text can lead a person's fate in unwanted directions. Automatic translators are not appropriate here at all. Such texts have to be translated by a translator who is well versed in the subject. And yet there is still no alternative to human translators.
Culture and Transcreation
How do I address people in other languages? How do I translate slogans and advertising texts without failing due to cultural factors? Adapting texts to a culture and the people associated with it is sometimes essential for the success of a product. Unfortunately, machines are not capable of this. Because a simple word-for-word translation does not help here.
Conclusion
As you can see, machine translation and human translation are not opposed but rather complement each other. A human translator is vital in almost all of the above-mentioned fields but machine translation can also be very helpful in a bunch of situations. The key is to know them both well, and make decisions based on the intended use of the final translated text.
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