Jul 6, 2019
Machine Translation, not as bad as you might think
While machine translation will never fully replace professional human translators, since no machine is able to comprehend all the nuances of any language, here are 5 reasons why you should use MT for translating content.
More and more businesses are choosing translation services in order to localize their assets and increase their global customer base. In fact, the demand for translation services across the globe is constantly rising. However, traditional human translation doesn’t always meet the demands of a dynamic business of today. In spite of its undeniable qualities of accuracy and quality; many businesses are searching for a viable alternative.
Despite its drawbacks, Machine Translation is already widely used for localization projects. In this article, we will discuss 5 reasons to start using machine translation and introduce the machine translation and Human Review approach.
If you are in a situation where speed is your main priority simply go for machine translation — the translated content is ready in an instant.
Even though machine translation will never fully replace professional human translators, since no machine is able to comprehend all the nuances of any language, here are 5 reasons why you should use MT for translating content:
Reason #1: It has unbeatable speed
If you are in a situation where speed is your main priority simply go for machine translation — the translated content is ready in an instant. If you prefer machine translation with human review approach (discussed later in the article), take into consideration that the process of reviewing translations will be longer. However, the waiting time will be significantly lower compared to only human translation, which is performed from scratch.
Reason #2: It is low cost
Depending on the language combination, costs for machine translation + human review are around 40% lower rate than the normal rate for human translation. Languages such as Hungarian and Scandinavian languages are charged at around 25% lower rate.
Reason #3: It can be a repetition killer
Websites and e-commerce usually contain a lot of repetitive content. When you make one change to a repetition, the engine will apply this across the whole website. This is an incredible time and money saver — remember that websites and e-commerce can contain a lot more content than expected!
Reason #4: It deals with high volumes of content
On average, a professional translator translates around 1500–2500 words per day. Now imagine your project has 100.000+ words. Yes, we can just give you the number of days, but you get the picture. High volumes of content require much time. Using MT speeds things up.
Reason #5: It’s functional
When setting up a project with Text United, whether it’s outsourced or done internally by your team, you or your project manager are able to choose what kind of project should be set up. There are two levels of quality: human translation and machine translation + human review.
Machine translation by itself will never be as accurate as the one performed by a human translator. It’s probably not suitable as a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to dealing with global content. However, if you want to reach out to your global audience, you can choose the tactical approach of machine translation and human review to achieve the results that you want, which is exactly what we will discuss below.
Exploring the ‘Machine Translation and Human Review’ Approach
Machine translation translates source content from one language into one or more other languages. The best example of such a tool is — Google Translate. After all the hype surrounding MT, we came to understand that machine translation will never fully replace professional human translators. However, machine translation remained a tempting solution for specific types of content.
The hybrid that rightfully appeared after hundreds of people spend their time and effort correcting terrible Google Translate mistakes could be ‘the new black’ of the translation world: the Machine Translation and Human Review approach is more functional and definitely more effective than machine translation and much cheaper and faster than a manual translation. In short, when applying this approach, the content is translated using a machine translation engine and then gets edited by a professional translator. The question that probably comes to your mind is ‘But is a machine translation and human review approach good enough for my content’? Let’s find out.
What are the Advantages of ‘Machine Translation and Human Review’ Approach Compared to Regular Translation?
We’ve already mentioned the most obvious advantage of speed and cost. Let’s not forget that professional translation done from scratch requires time: plenty of attention to detail and work to transmit the same message from the source content into the translated version. A professional translator simply has to dedicate a great deal of time and effort to performing full translation of a given content. Note that translators usually charge a fixed fee — per word — so you will have your first translation made at a price without discounts.
‘the new black’ of the translation world: the Machine Translation and Human Review approach
With a machine translation + human review approach, you can expect an overall cost reduction of around 40% compared to a professional translation by a human translator. Speed is another major benefit. Of course, it all depends on the language combination of your project, but usually, the projects under 5k to 10k words are translated within 24 hours.
Machine translation itself is the cheapest and the fastest option, but as already mentioned (probably everywhere), its quality will leave you and your customers feeling underwhelmed, if not annoyed or neglected.
So… How Should I Know If ‘Machine Translation with Human Review’ is an Approach Good Enough for My Content?
The answer may be simple and unsurprising, but it simply all depends on the content you want to translate.
For multilingual companies who need to translate e-mails and basic communication, machine translation and human review would be the best solution for quick results. The best example would be Text United Outlook Integration, where e-mails are machine-translated and edited by human translators. Of course, machine translation is not as good when it comes to quality, that’s why the human review is a crucial part.
Content such as recipes, cooking instructions or technical tutorials on how to use an app, or even FAQs usually doesn’t require professional translation because of their simplicity when it comes to grammar, style, and semantics. They do still require the highest quality, but this can be achieved by simply using a machine translation and human review approach.
While it all depends on your business, simple websites and small e-commerce translation projects can be generally be machine translated and reviewed by human translators, too.
Machine Translation and Human Review at Text United
We realized that this approach is the new black! That’s why from now on, our system supports a new kind of paid translation services, which are tailored specifically to the needs of high quality translation at a lower price.
How is this achieved?
To create a new machine translation with human review project:
#1. Simply upload your files at Text United
#2. Choose a new option: Machine & Human Review in the Project Creation Wizard
How Does It Work?
Your content is automatically machine translated and the project managers at Text United assign the task of reviewing its segments to professional translators.
How come the price point is lower?
The translators charge less for the translation since the content that they review, edit and rephrase has been already pre-translated.
While the quality of machine translated content often lacks the overall message and consistency of the source text, with the help of a human translator, the content greatly improves in quality and consistency.
Let’s do a little test:
- What do you do when you want to get high volumes of content translated quickly?
- What do you do when you want to have your translation done fast, but maintaining a certain standard of quality?
If you answered only machine translation for the first question and machine translation + human review for the second one, we delivered our message properly. Thanks for reading!
If you liked the article, don’t forget to CLAP and/or leave your comments below.
Feel free to contact us for information about our Machine Translation + Human Review option.
Written by: Gosia Szaniawska-Schiavo, Content Manager at Text United
Edited by: Elad Scharler-Plotnik, Head of Marketing at Text United
Illustrations by: Weronika Mroczek
