Human Translation vs. Machine Translation

Machine translation (MT) tools like Google Translate, Bing Translator and even our own Lexigo.EMT (Enterprise Machine Translation) are on the rise ,  and they’re getting smarter — but when is it suitable to use machine translation as opposed to a professional human translation?

To answer, we need to look at the disadvantages and advantages of both solutions by understanding how everything really works.

It’s also important to note that Machine Translation that exists in professional organisations like Lexigo is built and operated purely for clients, this should arguably provide more accurate and specific, tailored results for clients in comparison to free tools. This adds yet another dimension to the long-standing debate  —  for simplicity, let’s compare Google Translate with Human Translation.

How machine translation like Google’s, work

Google Translate works on something called Neural Machine Translation which basically learns from loads of data over time, attempts to find patterns and continually improves to offer you the best combination of translation in available language pairs.

Advantages

It’s free: Google Translate offers its services at no-cost. That’s a business advantage everyone can appreciate but there is a minimal cost if you’ll be using Google Translate through an API.

It’s instant & online: Google Translate is conveniently available online for cross-platform use. Translations are instantaneous and for immediate use.

Get the gist: If you’ve ever used Google Translate, you probably have quickly determined its limitations. It’s good at getting the ‘gist’ of something so you can understand the basics. You could easily determine what a site’s subject is about or the primary points of an email.

Multiple languages: Google Translate is available in a large number of languages already, with more on the way.

Disadvantages

It’s limited: You can’t get everything translated with the service. And you won’t get a comprehensive translation of the text, either.

Not every language is offered: While Google’s translation gives plenty of languages, there are almost 7000 languages in the world and at least 300 of those are important business languages.

It won’t give natural, fluent translation: Google Translate gives a mechanical and direct translation of words. You won’t get text that reads naturally across those languages, although the neural foundation to its technology aims to solve this problem.

Context is not part of the equation: Google Translate won’t know the context of your content. For example, who is your target audience, what are their ages, education level and cultural sensitivities? In addition, what is the content being used for? eg. for a speech, marketing copy, website, white paper, instructional content or something else? What is your brand’s voice and what terms does your brand prefer to use (eg. automobile vs. car).

It’s only a machine after all: Translating keywords for SEO and SEM or translating a brand name requires lots of research, study and further localisation  —  all things machine translation can’t take in to account.

So, what’s Google Translate good for?

Google Translate is suitable for all of the following purposes:

Determining a document’s native language: Google can automatically detect a language, so you don’t have to spend time figuring out its native tongue.

Understanding the primary points of a website or section of text: You can use the translation service to get a vague understanding of what a webpage or other correspondence entails. Similarly, you can translate your message into a different language if you simply need to transmit something quickly.

Informal or casual communication: The service makes it easy to quickly get a message to or from different languages. This type of quick and simple translation is great for informal or casual correspondence. Anything official within a company would risk miscommunication or other related issues.

Nothing official: Related to the above points, Google Translate should never be the chosen method to communicate anything official within company business. It’s great for casual and informal messaging — especially if the receiving party already knows you’re using it. That way any unintentional errors won’t be a problem.

Resource By : https://lexigo.com/blog/human-translation-vs-machine-translation