What’s the difference between professional translation services and Google Translate?
When you need to translate something important, you usually have two options: hire a professional translation service or use the well-known Google plugin. And while the latter may seem quite beneficial – after all, it’s free and fast – we strongly advise against it, if at all possible. This is because machine translation has some significant limitations.
Of course, it all depends on the context, so if you need to translate an online page for personal reasons, Google Translate is a viable option. However, if you need to translate a website, business documents, a mobile app, you should turn to a professional translation agency that offers translation and interpretation services. Read on to find out why.
Accuracy
Since machine translation is cheaper, accuracy is sacrificed to save money. Small sentences or single words can be translated efficiently with online translation services like Google Translate. However, when you need to have larger sections of text or entire treatises translated, the accuracy of these online translation services drops drastically.
If you own a business, you have probably spent numerous hours refining and improving your branding and content in a conference room. A professional translation service, on the other hand, can successfully translate the concepts you have worked so hard on into another language. If you are in the medical, legal or technical industries and need to have documents translated, not using translation services can lead to incorrect – and sometimes damaging – translations.
Context
You should keep in mind that every translation is unique. Translations are not interchangeable. Even if the subjects are the same, the translation of Text A cannot be used for Text B. Human translators must thoroughly review the original material. Then they must decide on the terminology to use.
Computers, as we know, can distinguish between different terminologies. On the other hand, a machine cannot identify broader themes in specific texts or grasp the particular contextual requirements of a translation job. Human translators are in touch with their clients and strive to meet their requirements in order to understand this.
Stylistics
Google Translate only understands words and not the context or stylistics of the text. And this is something a translator should always rely on – after all, the same term can mean something different in numerous languages depending on the context.
However, when translating something important to your business or family, you want it to come across naturally and correctly on both sides. And that’s what style recommendations are all about: helping translators adapt and correctly express your content in another language.
Takeaway
Although Google Translate can be useful in certain situations, such as when you are traveling abroad and do not understand the local language, there are instances when a professional, human translation is simply unbeatable.
Professional translators have the advantage of being able to recognize all the aspects and subtleties that make up the richness, multidimensionality and vibrancy of a language.
Even in its most advanced forms, machine learning is fundamentally different from human understanding. For the foreseeable future, human foreign language translation services such as DYS Translations will be required to accurately understand the intent and meaning of a statement.
