Google Translate: When to use machine translation tools
Google Translate is a multilingual digital translation service offered by Google. The machine translation software can translate speech, text, images, sites, or even a video from one language to another. Though it’s not the only one in the market, it’s more used by people compared to, let’s say, Bing. A survey shows that as of 2013, it had served about 200 million people a day.
But just how reliable and accurate machine translation is?
While Google Translate is a good concept: type a sentence on your phone, let the software do its job, and have your text quickly translated into another language, it’s not always accurate. Thus, one can’t rely on it 100%. To point this out, let’s try some examples:
Point 1: The famous Brazilian jazz song, Garota de Ipanema is translated in “Girl in the Golden Body” by Google. Professional translators and anyone who knows a bit of Portuguese, however, say that it should be translated as “The Girl from Ipanema”.
Point 2: Translating the word “sixty-two” to Filipino by using Google would result to “62”, which is not helping anyone at all.
Point 3: French expression “Se taper le cul par terre” in Google’s translation is “Ass banging on the floor” when it should be “A joke or humor that will have you laughing and rolling on the floor”.
Point 4: If you copy a whole text from Spanish in Google Translate, you’d barely understand 50% of it in English.
So, when it comes down to it, a professional translator is still a much better choice. But it does not mean machine translation is a failure.
Translation Project Management
Still wondering what management software could do for a translation agency? Are you confusing it with machine translation? Management software saves a lot of time and energy. Translations are not just shifting the words from one language to another. And there cannot be any delays in delivery. We have to work fast and be on time always. In fact, we try to make it before time.
Translation project management software gives a full control over time and speed. It increases the work speed and keeps work going on with the pace of time. It’s a lesser strenuous task this way. It saves time and organizes the task in a way easier to handle. We keep an eye around the project but with the project management software, it’s easy to stay connected with the team working on a particular project. Even the client can be connected over to the people working on their project. Isn’t that truly amazing? You don’t have to take the stress and you can keep a complete check on your work while it’s being done.
This also helps in communication and increases the understanding of the translator too. This way the translator can understand better how you need your work done.
Conclusion
DO USE Google Translate if you are in a hurry to translate simple sentences from one language to another. DON’T USE machine translation if you are dealing with academic text and literature. Don’t use it if it comes to translation for business, or when you need to have a technical, medical or legal document to translate.
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