Blog (n.)
"A website where an individual person, or people representing an organization, write regularly about recent events or topics that interest them, usually with photos and links to other websites that they find interesting".
Oxford Learner's Dictionary
Human vs the Machine
So, you’ve set up a website for your business and would like to let the whole world know
about your product and services. Obviously not everybody speaks your language and
therefore to reach your customers it will be necessary to translate the website and
product /services’ materials into your potential clients’ language.
What is the best way to make your website content accessible to your international
potential clients and partners? Is there any cheap and easy way to translate it?
It depends upon what you are trying to achieve. If, for example, you are running a
property website, then it might be sufficient to embed into your website a machine
translation app, like the Google Translate plugin which, if required, would automatically
translate the content of your site into the reader’s language. That translation would give
your reader a general idea of what the properties on your site are about but the quality of
the translation would be poor.
Using Google, Microsoft or any other machine translation plug-in is cheap, easy and
simple. However, there is a risk that an inaccurate and incomplete machine translation
might confuse and mislead, or even offend your potential clients and might put them off
your products or services.
The other alternative is to get your website content professionally translated by an
experienced native-speaking translator. It would not be cheap but the quality of the
translation would be considerably higher.
A potential client reading your website content would see that they are dealing with a serious business, which respects them by making an extra effort of carefully translating the information customers are looking for.
It is interesting that the same sentiment is shared by the people most closely familiar with
all the benefits and shortcomings of machine translation. Gory Yahaya, Head of Training
and Development at Google ‘Digital Garage’ training programme, admitted at one of his
recent seminars that Google Translate plug-in was by no means perfect, although it was a
very cost effective way to translate the content. He said: “Nothing beats translating your
website professionally. If you would like to translate your website properly you should use
a professional translator… It would be pricier but you cannot beat the quality”.
It is very reassuring and confidence-inducing for all us professional translators and
interpreters to hear that no machine is able to replace or even compete with our excellent service.
