A perfectly normal day at the office: an email is received from a new business partner in Japan, an offer is ready for a big customer in Helsinki or Milan, a team partner writes a letter in English: Crossing borders, thoughts Communication is a daily phenomenon among all countries. It's okay if your English interactions sometimes sound like gibberish. Just enter your text into the machine. The text will then be output again in the desired language in very little time. That's easy. Yes, if business success didn't depend on communication…
As globalization progresses, translation work is increasing more than ever. Correspondence, web pages, contracts, transcriptions, offers, documents, etc. related to international business payments. Additionally, the amount of text has increased tremendously. Also, it is not always possible to send a task to a translator or translation agency just for time reasons and not for budget reasons at all.
However, it's important to know when machine translation is available, what you can expect from it, and when it's best to rely on human translation. Because everything you use to communicate shapes your image. Additionally, in some countries, the reputation, completeness, structure, and readability of business partners are essential to the continuity of the business relationship and, in turn, to the success of the business.
Broadly speaking, there are free translation tools on the market, such as Google Translate, and professional translation software, which is continuously optimized and enhanced. Tailored to specific project requirements.
Here we outline the most important differences.
Translation Software – Plus
Translation software – minus
Cheap by comparison, or even free in optimal circumstances Unusual sentence structures where the text doesn't flow and are often hard to understand Always just translating words, not being able to “read between the lines” and highlighting what's important It is also not possible to reproduce ambiguous words or grammatical structures in very large amounts of text in a short time. For example, the different meanings of the word 'bank' which can mean both bank, beat or (broad) comb, and words like 'adjust' which can mean both. Adjust something, suggest something or stop something. Translates into many target languages at the push of a button, but rarely handles long sentences and doesn't work accurately
Professional programs often require intensive treatment of technical terminology
Bottom line: If you value well-structured, understandable, and readable text, there's no way to avoid human translators. At a minimum, a combination of machine translation and text post-editing is required.
Additional tip: large amounts of text
If you need to translate large amounts of text, we recommend using carefully selected professional translation software. Good results are obtained when translating standardized texts such as simple manuals.
Not recommended: Machine translation for marketing and advertising
For marketing, images and advertising texts, machine translation is not suitable due to language effects and targeted selection of special words, as it only translates words and does not convey the message. However, for simple communications, it may be helpful to use a translation program.
Be wary of specialized documents such as contracts.
When it comes to legal documents, machine translation should be completely avoided. Things are too complex here, and any mistakes can quickly lead to time-consuming questions, a lengthy unraveling process, stalled negotiations, and potentially costly legal repercussions.
