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In the summer of 2007, a group of reporters in Israel chose a sort of translation shortcut and used an online machine language tool on a website to translate a document to be emailed to the Dutch Embassy in the city of Tel Aviv. The message was intended to be about a political conference in the Netherlands and was to be delivered to the Dutch minister in person. Unfortunately, the message wasn’t even close; The result was that the journalist asked the Dutch minister some strange and disturbing questions about his mother.

So far the online translations.

It is obvious that machine translations have restrictions; they cannot necessarily think and debate, nor can they positively understand the cohesion and flow of words. Most of the time they can work as well or as badly as the programmers designed them to. In the above case, while we can absolutely blame the reporters for not getting an accurate translation of such an important and well-respected message, one must consider that part of the blame should fall on the poor and shoddy programming that was done on the tool. from the website. itself.

These online tools, ie Google’s online translator and Yahoo!’s Babelfish, are surely of some help and have some advantages; Everyone has access to these tools online for little or no cost, and they are very useful for private projects or single word translations. More advanced translation programs, such as Babylon and Systran, are even more useful because they contain dictionaries and common phrases, as well as verb usage and grammatical additions for the languages ​​of many countries.

However, when it comes to a genuine, formal translation service, none of these methods can really compare to the human touch.

So why should someone choose one method over another? The choice depends on the project itself. For a simple job, like translating a website, for example, most online language services provide a suitable “gist”. Google’s built-in translator plugin can automatically translate almost any website you visit from the Google search engine, in more than 54 languages. For personal uses, perhaps sending a message to a loved one or friend abroad, the online language professional can also come in handy, as long as you have a good sense of humor.

Many professional translators use translation software to do their work, which may or may not be useful to you. Why pay someone else $250.00 just to use software that you could possibly buy for $99 and use yourself? Most of the translation software is also very easy to use now. In most programs, you simply upload a document and the translation software reads and rewrites it. There is hardly any human interaction. Although professional translation software is designed to make the best “guess” of what the original text contained, there are some issues that need to be addressed.

For example, translation software most likely doesn’t understand cultural components, special dialects, or slang. Many, if not all, software programs simply do not have the database extensibility to include these versions and various dialects. The translation is word for word, so any additional expressions, such as the Singapore slang of putting “lah” at the end of some words, will be incomprehensible to the software.

Another disadvantage is inspiration. Let’s be honest; this is a machine. It has no emotion or voice; he can’t feel anything and he certainly can’t express himself. When writing a message to someone of a respectable stature, for example a legal advisor, the expression should be cordial and professional at all times. Software translators do not capture this “mood”. What you say in your original message is all the software will capture. It will not search for other words to use, nor will it suggest you alter the expression of the text. This can also be unfavorable for a novelist who needs to translate his book from one language to another.

If you really think about using the human touch in your translations, it is surely the best option in terms of readability and accuracy. If you have a Russian document, for example, it would be a great idea to hire someone who knows the Russian language or is Russian. So neither software nor computer is needed.

This way, of course, can be very expensive. This writer discovered that he needed to one day translate several legal documents into English that needed to be quickly translated into Russian. The cost to do it was $250.00, to translate about twenty pages. So while human translation service can be a very good alternative when you want 100% accuracy, make sure you are dealing with humans before you spend the money.

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