Machine Translation
The translation of text by a computer, with no human assistance is known as Machine Translation. It can also be referred to as Automated Translation. It comes with a significant number of pros and cons. What makes Machine Translations the most advantageous is its speed and cost-effectiveness. The shortcoming to this is that the standard of translation is not maintained. The translations can be inaccurate, inconceivable, and possibly risky.
The advantages of machine translation
Machine Translation increases the productivity by delivering translations faster. To pre-translate new segments that are not influenced by translation memory, freely available machine translation can be used. One gets flexibility and choice to select from a number of different language pairs and engines with machine translations to suit all types of projects. There are also various options to relate and compare the outcomes of instruction-based and statistical machine translation engines.
There are also many free tools readily available on the internet like Google Translate, Skype Translator, etc.
The disadvantages of machine translation
There are several disadvantages of using Machine Translations. The level of accuracy of machine translations can be very low. There is also a risk of inconsistency of accuracy across different languages. Machines can also not translate the context and the costs to be paid for the mistakes can be high. There, also are times when mere translations simply do not work.
There are many technical documents such as medical equipment, aviation manuals, legal documents that cannot afford even the slightest of inaccuracy. In these cases, the cost of errors can be someone’s life, huge amounts of money and irreversible damage to the image of your company. So, choose carefully!
Human Translation
Though there are machines that can carry out the process of translations, human translation is still the best way of translating any written document. Human translations mean that all the translation processes involved in the translation of any written text are carried out by human translators.
Human Translation promises a higher standard of accuracy but at the cost of longer turnaround times and higher costs.
The advantages of human translation
The highest accuracy can be promised only by human translators. Interpreting the context and capturing the same meaning of the text is a human thing. Machines can just simply translate words. Human translators can interpret the creative use of language and can also efficiently understand the idiomatic differences among all the languages. They can review their work and therefore, provide a quality process. Human translators have the ability to recognize the content where literal translation cannot work and to find the most appropriate alternative.
The disadvantages of human translation
With human translators, the turnaround time is longer. Moreover, they seldom work for free, unless you work in collaboration with a translation agency that has access to a long list of translators.
Human translators are the best option when accuracy is required. Also, human translators work the best when the source material is not-so-easy to comprehend and the languages you are translating between are complex. Machines seem to be worthless in both these situations.
When to use machine and human translation
The fact is that competing between machine and human translation is a pretty useless distraction. Both serve extremely valid purposes and therefore, what is necessary is to have the knowledge about when these two different types of translation services are to be used.
Machine translations are preferred when there is a huge bulk of content to translate and the general meaning is sufficient. Machine translations can also work when there is no final audience for your content or when documents are to be translated for internal use within a company (only in the cases where 100% accuracy is not required).
But, when there is an essential requirement of accuracy, for example, while translating technical or legal documents, medical guidelines, product instructions, and content related to health and safety, then the need for human translators arise. While translating marketing material or other texts for creative language uses and other such cases where there is a target audience for your translated content, human translations work the best.
Both, Machine Translations and Human Translations deserve their specific place in the industry, even if they play very different roles. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on choosing the right service for your translation projects instead of debating over the two.(TRANSLATION SERVICES IN NEW YORK)
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