The Battle of Dominance: Man Vs Machine Translations

ByLanguageNoBar

Well, it is a matter of debates and discussions that which among the machine translation and human translation is better. Some who value speed and cost-effectiveness lean towards machines while some who need accuracy above everything else value human translators. As the world is contracted because of the internet, more and more businesses are becoming multi-lingual and multi-cultural. For communications, both inter & external, in these multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and international businesses, translation has become the key. Some business organizations do favor the speed that machine translation provides while some who work in the industry where accuracy matters the most go for human translations. Although, there is talk in the translation town that in the coming years, AI advancements will enable machine translations to be at par with human translation and that might not be very good news for human translators.

With human translations, you might have some extra cost to bear but for the quality of output that it provides it is very much bearable. Human translations are highly applicable in areas where a human touch is absolutely needed, meaning accuracy and creativity like professional marketing translation services and localization. However, machine translations are almost instantaneous and hit the sweet spot of money, but cannot be trusted or applied everywhere.  But for sure machine translations can be very helpful in cases where large volume no-priority translations are needed. Now the question is when to use which?

Use Machine Translations –

  • For not so profiting section of your business.
  • While testing out in a new market or just dipping your toe into it.
  • When translating not-so-creative texts like guidelines, reviews, directions, etc.

Use Human Translations –

  • When accuracy is paramount to you.
  • When communicating like a human is crucial.
  • When quality is more valuable than speed.

Despite machines’ high-speed and large-volume work handling abilities, they are not going to take over yet. But yes, because of more required resources and more time-taken by human translators, machines are becoming a preferred choice. With Artificial Intelligence making significant advancements, soon machine and Manual translations are going to co-exist. However, let’s have a look Advantages and Disadvantages of both types of translations –

Advantages –

Machine Translation – Machine translations are rapidly evolving and with the inclusion of artificial intelligence to regulate machine translations, it has now become inevitable to deny its growth and ability to handle large volumes and more complex tasks than before. Also, if you are on a budget then Machine Translation is just the thing for you. To put it simply, Machines Translations are cost-effective and when creative translations are not needed, you can cut your cost by employing machine translation.

Human Translation – Humans have the ability to break down the complexity of a language, understand the emotions, and bring-in the creativity. Human translators can utilize their past experiences and feelings to make the text sound more and more human and make it more compelling. Additionally, humans have the advantage of collaboration. Human translators can collaborate with each other and put their efforts together to produce an amazing output, therefore, fewer revisions are needed, and even lesser chance of missing out on important details. With human translations, you can humanize your communications and hence, get a higher rate of conversions and higher accuracy of the translated text.

Disadvantages –

Machine Translations – Machine translations are sloppy and cannot be efficient until verified by human translators after the translations are done. Next is the creativity factor, machines cannot produce creative translations. They follow a set pattern or algorithm for translation works and creativity requires imagination, especially in the case of marketing translations and professional website translations or localization. Also, machines do not understand the cultural differences and references. As the world has many cultures, and people belonging to different cultures have their belief systems, machines do not understand that one thing that signifies fun and liveliness in culture might be offensive or absurd in the other. Until now, machines are not capable of understanding the context of the text. Linguistic subtleties, like make a run, is one such example. Machine translations also lack the ability to utilize visual aids to understand the content better and provide consistency and accuracy in the translations.

Human Translations – As mentioned earlier, machines might not be taking over the translation world just yet, but they do present a strong case. Human translations are very resource-intensive and cost more than machine translation. If speed is your need, then machine translation would be a great fit for you, given your content does not require contextual accuracy and is not a high priority or sensitive content. Basically, human translations are comparatively more time-taking and expensive, and these two are its only major drawbacks.

So, what’s the bottom line? Which one should you choose to go with? Well, as has been indicated many times in the text above, your content type decides which translation method you should go with. If your content is filled with cultural connotations or they have any effect on your content and you need accuracy more than anything then you must choose to go for human translations. While if it is a very non-contextual type of content where absolute accuracy is not so much of a thing and time is of the essence, you must go with machine translations.

However, irrespective of what method you choose for your translations, you will need an expert human translator to go review the translated work. Machine-translated content must be proofread to correct the mistakes and ensure that the document delivers the same message as intended. Therefore, a mix of both should be the best for most types of content, however, certain contexts should solely be reserved for human translations, for instance, when morphing the texts while localizing a website or any other communicative material, only human translators can provide the adjustments and creative thinking needed. Therefore, it’s certain that machine translations can never replace human translations. So, if you want to get a great team of native-speaking translators to work on your content, LanguageNoBar is the place to check out. With its experienced subject matter experts and rigorous quality assurance, it provides the best quality translation services in more than 150 languages.

Although you might not be fluent in all the target languages, you can assess the procedures that are designed to ensure high-quality translations. To ensure that your target audience receives the superior user experience they deserve, request tests before going live and reviewing the findings. LanguageNoBar is one of the leading translation agency in India and we believe in delivering high quality content to our customers. We provide translation in 150+ languages ensuring full transparency with the customers.