The Risks of Machine Translation: Is It Worth It?

Machine translation is an inefficient way of adapting texts, as it may jeopardize a company’s reputation. Nowadays, technological advances allow us to translate texts quickly and conveniently. However, this carries a lot of risk, as it’s easy to fall into basic typing errors.

Users who actively participate in the world of social media tend to be very demanding with the content they share. Texts that contain translation mistakes will be discarded without a shadow of a doubt. Therefore, if you have a company, you should consider a series of tips.

Why is it better to use a professional translation?

Translation agencies have professionals with precise knowledge of how to adapt texts in other languages and styles. It’s not uncommon to see that many companies, in order to save costs, go on the Internet and use free machine translation services to convert texts. It may work in some cases, but it can also backfire.

Professional translation is a great solution to obtain serious texts without losing the freshness of the original content. It’s not the same thing for a text to be converted by artificial intelligence software than by a human being. Creativity and emotion are crucial elements for a text to be intelligible.

You can try it yourself: try placing a text in a foreign language and converting it into English. You will see that the result is not what a native speaker would say. For example, in translations from English into Romance languages, machine translation software doesn’t account for the complexity of the use of verbs in the imperfect tense. It’s common to find incorrect uses of the verbs “ser” or “estar“.

The way a country writes and speaks changes constantly. It’s important for a translator to know your culture in order to adapt the texts to the terminology of the target country. How does a professional text differ from a non-professional text?

Poor quality: using machine translation will cause a text to lose lexical richness.

Loss of reputation: placing poorly translated texts on a website will make users not take you seriously. The loss of credibility on the Internet is a terrible thing.

Inadequate customer service: if you have a business whose purpose is to provide goods or services to customers from different countries, it’s important that you take care of the texts you are going to use.

The importance of a translation agency

In a technical text, it’s easy to recognize deficiencies resulting from poor translation. Jobs that require technical terms or words that are only used in specific fields usually require the advice of a translation agency. The Internet is a great tool, but you have to know how to use it properly.

The correct use of grammar is crucial so that a text doesn’t sound strange when it’s read. Translators are language scholars, so if you have a business and want to make the leap into international markets, the best option is to avoid machine translation services. Contact professional translators instead!

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