5 occasions when you might not need a human translator
Photo by Andrea De Santis on UnsplashAre you lost in translation? Maybe you can’t decide whether you need to employ a human or whether a machine translation will be fine? And from wildly exaggerated claims to dire warnings, it’s hard to make sense of it all.
To help you out, here are five situations when you might not actually need a human translator.
1. GETTING THE GIST OF A DOCUMENT QUICKLY
Perhaps you’re a social-media manager for a busy hotel. Every day you read multiple comments, and reviews on a variety of different platforms. In this scenario, machine translation is your friend! Use it to see what people are saying about your business. In many cases you’ll see that a quick ‘like’ or simple “thank-you” is the appropriate response. It’s generally not cost effective to have every single comment translated by a professional.
It’ll also alert you to problems. If you realise that there’s a complaint or misunderstanding brewing, then that’s the time to get a human translator involved to make sure you fully understand the nuances of the problem and can craft the appropriate response together. That’s the point when it’s well worth your investment to avoid potential problems before they happen.
Or maybe you’re researching something on the web and have source material in a language you don’t speak. Machine translation is the perfect way of getting a quick overview of the subject matter. If there’s something that you think is particularly relevant and you want to make sure you understand it better, or if you want to quote the source text publicly, then you can employ a professional to help.
2. CAPTIONS FOR FAST, DISPOSABLE VIDEO CONTENT
When you’re creating short, “disposable” videos for TikTok, Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts, it makes sense to use the auto-captioning features that each platform provides. Your main concern here will usually be speed. With the average lifespan for short-form video currently estimated at around 24-48 hours, using professional translation can become expensive. If you are using auto-captions, though, it’s usually worth having a quick look through them first to make sure there are no major errors that you want to edit out before posting!
If you’re creating longer videos, for YouTube or for your own website, and want them to function as ‘evergreen’ content, you may be better considering professional translation and subtitling. Promotional video content for your business will benefit from the human touch. Your translator can get to know you and your target market and tailor their language to your business tone-of-voice. Instructional content - product videos or employee training, for example - should be subtitled professionally. You don’t want errors that could cause problems in this kind of content.
3. VERY REPETITIVE AND FORMULAIC ELEMENTS
Machine translation is great at repetitive tasks within a given context. If you have content for translation that falls into this category, you may not need a human translator to keep retranslating very similar content.
A good example of this would be user interfaces with many repetitive elements or standardized product descriptions. Get them professionally translated once and then reuse the translated elements. On the whole this is boring work for a human translator to do over and over again and it’s not cost-effective if you’re paying your human translators a fair, living rate (which I’m sure you are).
4. WHEN CONFIDENTIALITY ISN’T AN ISSUE
If your text for translation falls into one of the categories described in points 1-3, then point 4 becomes relevant. You can use machine translation when confidentiality isn’t an issue. Don’t forget that for machine translation to be possible, the systems have to keep learning, so texts that you input are usually stored for a period of time. Always, make sure that the information you’re feeding to a third-party translation engine is appropriate.
You shouldn’t feed sensitive customer complaints, personal information, or unpublished company data into a machine translation engine or AI chatbot.
5. WHEN IT’S LOW RISK
You’re probably starting to see from the previous points that the decision whether to choose machine translation or a human translator usually boils down to risk assessment. For translation tasks that you consider to be generally low-risk, you’ll probably be happy going with machine translation. It’s low-cost, fast and easy.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself when you’re assessing the risk versus cost-benefit of using non-human translation:
Accuracy and quality: How accurate do you need your terminology to be? Does it matter if something sounds a little stilted? How important would a mistranslation be?
Nuance and context: Is this a text where it’s important to know the specific context? Is cultural sensitivity an issue?
Confidentiality and data security: Does the document contain personal data or confidential company information? How robust are the data security policies of the machine translation tool you are thinking of using? Does your company IT department have a policy regarding machine translation or use of AI?
Specific terminology: Does the text for translation contain industry-specific terminology? What would be the risk of incorrect terminology being used?
Company reputation/image: What effect would an approximative machine translation of this particular text have on your brand image? Would it affect how professional you/your company seems? Does it matter?
CONCLUSION
Hopefully by now you have a better idea of the kinds of situations where machine translation can shine and those where you need a human safeguard in the form of a qualified professional.
And, of course, if you do decide you need a human translator for French to English translation, don’t hesitate to get in touch.