Sound expertise
Texts are translated from German into English by a native speaker who has been living in Germany for 35 years and has extensive experience in the specialist fields of software and website localisation, data and telecommunications systems, marketing and logistics, and automobile and machine engineering. Translations into and out of all European languages are supplied by experienced translators, who all translate texts from their respective specialist fields into their native languages. Our experience has shown that only native speakers are able to consistently deliver the high quality demanded by our clients. You can therefore be certain of receiving an absolutely correct translation of your specialist text.
Translation software or translation service?
There are many translation programs available on the market today which claim to produce a perfect finished article. It is indisputable that such programs can be of great assistance in laying the foundation for a translation. However, they will never be capable of replacing their human counterparts. Language itself is far too complex to be reproduced faithfully in all its entirety by a computer program. Language simply contains too many nuances and shades of meaning. It is precisely these variables of language which, if falsely interpreted, can lead for to a misunderstanding, which can in turn prove fatal to an important business relationship. The end result could even be the loss of a potential business partner or being passed over in favour of the competition during delicate contract negotiations.
Anybody requiring a translation should therefore consider whether they want to entrust the development, or even the existence, of their business to a computer program, which cannot guarantee perfect results. Or should they decide in favour of the, admittedly more expensive, alternative: namely the professional translator?
7 serious drawbacks of machine translations
However, it is not just about the linguistic quality of machine-generated translations. Providers of NMT (neuronal machine translation) solutions simply overlook the fact that the professional creation of translations involves much more than the rendering of texts from one language into another.
Without the consistent involvement of a professional translator (either in-house or external) in a corporate translation process, the end results will seldom be 100% accurate. And corporate translations must/should be 100% accurate.
The reasons for this are manifold:
1. The use of a CAT (computer-assisted translation) tool is absolutely imperative in order to be able to integrate proprietary translation memories and terminology lists. Terms that are translated in one way at a company may, at another company, have a completely different counterpart.
2. Some companies have been using specific terms for years which, although actually incorrect, they do not want to change to avoid confusing their customers and users (we really did encounter this situation with translations we prepared for Porsche many years ago!). An NMT tool will hardly be capable of coping with such scenarios.
3. NMT tools cannot handle the desktop publishing layout and formatting issues that frequently arise in the translating process (e.g. if the creator of a documentation does not know how to use their program properly and writes texts like using a typewriter in order to achieve a certain visual effect). While this will probably be less of a problem with websites, when it comes to technical documentation the results can be disastrous.
4. Marketing texts, for instance, require a different approach than is the case with technical translations. For instance, it may be better to merge or split CAT segments in the source language when translating the content or message into the target language, or it may be desirable not to translate something in the first place because it would be superfluous in the target language.
5. NMT tools do not have a brain, they only regurgitate what they have been taught (albeit obviously at a far greater speed than the human translator).
6. They cannot think out of the box to create a translation which may not literally correspond to the original text, but which expresses the message it is intended to convey. They are not capable of choosing from multiple possibilities for translating a particular word in order to avoid repetitive usage or to create variety.
7. It is not uncommon for the source text to contain linguistic or content-related errors. In an automatic machine translation, these will naturally be mercilessly reproduced in the target text, which may well be checked but will probably seldom be compared with the source text. Such errors would be noticed by a competent professional translator during the translation process so that they can be corrected straight away and the customer can be informed accordingly.
A simple example
Let’s take the German word ‘sicher’, a word that appears very frequently in operating manuals, technical specifications and safety data sheets.
In English the word can have the following meanings:
safe, secure, reliable, sure, certain, assured, confident, positive,
or less frequently:
proof, reassured, definite, firm, trustworthy, unmistaken, poised, unharmful, unendangered
A leading online translation service called DeepL often has problems selecting the correct translation for such multi-meaning words. If you enter ‘Das ist eine sichere Alternative’, the only (!) proposed translation is ‘This is a safe alternative’, which may well be the wrong choice depending on the context (‘This is a reliable alternative’ could be much more suitable)..
The same applies to ‘Es ist eine sichere Wahl’ (suggestion: ‘It’s a safe choice’). The word ‘safe’ will not be appropriate in many cases.
The other alternatives will, of course, be much less frequently suitable in technical documents, where it is not important or desirable to use more varied formulations, which will, however, certainly be the case in marketing texts, for example.
Leave translating to professional translators!
Many project managers think that they can cut costs by giving a text that has been translated in-house to a translator, who then “just needs to make a few corrections”.
If top quality is required, this is absolutely the wrong approach!
Our experience has shown that:
- In 5 out of every 10 cases, the product of this method is, to put it bluntly, only fit for the waste bin.
- In 7 out of every 10 cases, it would have been cheaper and quicker to have the text translated from scratch by a professional translator than to have the in-house translation proof-read and corrected. The client does not save any time or money, as the employee charged with the translation – irrespective of how long he may have spent abroad –needs many more (naturally paid) hours to translate the text into what is, for him, a foreign language, than does the experienced translator translating into his native language. Answering the frequent enquiries from the translator is also a much more time-consuming exercise than it would appear at first glance.
- In 10 out of 10 cases, it is necessary to edit and correct the translation to a varying degree.
What do actually pay for when you engage a professional translator?
- Years of experience in their particular fields.
- The capability to directly leverage your company’s specific terminology (glossaries) and legacy documentation and content to prepare flawless translations of new material.
- A database (translation memory) is built up containing all your translations to ensure the consistent usage of your terminology and content. Such translation memories naturally also recognise material that has been used on previous occasions and insert it automatically into new translations. This also means that you do not have to pay for translations of existing content.
- The professional translator can pinpoint (potential) errors in your original content and bring them to your attention.
- Terms and words frequently have to be translated differently depending upon the specific context or sector. The translator knows this and uses the correct translation in each respective situation. Different sectors require differing writing styles, which can be reliably applied by the professional translator. It may be stylistically more appropriate, for instance, to use the present tense in the translation instead of the past tense found in the source text. Or it may better to split up or merge sentences, or even leave them out altogether. Such stylistic decisions cannot be made by machine translation or AI tools.
- The layout of your documentation can be perfectly adapted to accommodate the translated texts, which frequently will be of varying length compared to the original wording.
- To support the translation process, translation memories can be created based on external multilingual online resources (such as publicly available European directives or other web content) that relate directly to your industry.
- With the professional translator, you always have a personal point of contact for detailed questions regarding your translations.
Translators are a waste of space
Food for thought…:
Uploaded on 01.09.2013. Reversible text. Written and performed by Erik Skuggevik for The Norwegian Association of Literary Translators. Produced by Iver Grimstad