The work that translators do has always been subject to many misconceptions from people outside of the industry. For a long time, it was necessary to put out the message that not just anyone can translate. It takes more than just knowledge of two languages – it requires years of study and training, excellent comprehension, research and writing abilities, an extensive toolkit and a flair for words.
Today, the misconception is not so much that anyone can translate but that nobody actually needs to. Many people have seen the magic that AI can work when asked to translate a menu or help ask for directions, and they’ve assumed that the future is here – and with it, the death of the translation industry.
For those of us who work with translation and localisation, it can be frustrating to have to justify our existence over and over again. But this is also a necessary task, because we also know that seamless machine translation – without the need for any human input – is very, very far from being a reality. In fact, it’s more than that – this is actually a dangerous belief that, if acted upon, could result in disastrous legal, financial and medical consequences for companies, patients and society at large.
Continue reading for our take on some of the reasons why translation agencies and language-service providers still exist – and why they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
UNSUPERVISED MACHINE TRANSLATION IS HIGH RISK
Perhaps one reason why this misconception has taken hold is that most people experience machine translation in relatively low-stakes contexts. If you’re simply trying to communicate with a taxi driver in a foreign country or order pad thai in a restaurant, the worst that can happen is you get the wrong meal or your journey home takes ten minutes longer than it ought to. It’s frustrating if this happens, but it won’t be the end of the world.
But language service providers don’t exist to help with these sorts of interactions. Usually, the work we get involved with is much more high stakes. Consider the translation of a legal contract or the instruction pamphlet for a prescription drug. Mistakes here could mean lawsuits or fatalities. So, while it is entirely possible that an automated programme might produce an accurate result – and many agencies do use machine translation to assist with these kinds of jobs – it would be reckless to deploy them without any kind of human-expert review step.
The same also applies within marketing or customer communication contexts. While lives may not be at risk here, your company’s reputation will be, and any damage caused will directly hit your bottom line. Most businesses invest a lot of time and money into carefully crafting their messages and getting their tone of voice just right, taking care to appeal and to avoid causing offence. Consequently, it is only logical that they would also want to take the same level of care when localising for other markets. And by the same token, it stands to reason that language service providers exist to provide expert assistance with this.
MACHINES DON’T UNDERSTAND CULTURE
Today, ‘translation agencies’ do more than just translate. For a long time now, we have largely referred to ourselves as language service providers or localisation partners, and our service offering now also encompasses elements of cultural adaptation and consultancy. It’s about more than just swapping out one word for another, but recrafting a message in a new cultural context and thereby enabling it to actually generate value and achieve tangible, measurable results.
Automated tools can help translators to do this work more quickly, but they can’t go all the way. Word-sense disambiguation has long since been one of the major stumbling blocks with this technology – meaning that automated and AI systems struggle to grasp the full context of a word. They are quite simply unable to consider all of the many factors that a human linguist will be able to see clearly and subconsciously, and this limits their usefulness considerably.
For this reason, it is usually necessary to combine automated workflows with cultural expertise in the form of a human specialist. This makes it possible to localise texts for the target readership and ensure that each translation is tailored to the needs of the client. Language service providers exist to understand these needs and put together a workflow that is guaranteed to achieve them.
LSPS PROVIDE ESSENTIAL ANCILLARY SERVICES
This brings us back to one of our original misconceptions – that translation is just swapping one word for another. Once you try translating like that, you’ll see that it produces far from adequate results – and there are good reasons why translation agencies not only exist, but that they provide a broad suite of different language services. These include proofreading, editing, search-engine optimisation, desk-top publishing and formatting services, transcreation, copywriting and more.
These services are not just little extras that are nice to have – they are tools that we use to ensure your text can create value. For example, when it comes to legal contracts, the most important criterion is that they are accurate and legally watertight. Having an expert legal translator proofread the text can help to ensure this, allowing the translation to actually fulfil its intended purpose.
The objective of a website translation, on the other hand, may be to attract customers from a new market. To achieve this, it is not enough to simply have the words floating out there on the web – they need to be optimised for the most popular search engines to ensure they can actually be found.
Translation agencies not only provide these services, but they also offer advice and guidance on what steps will be necessary. They take the time to understand your unique needs and they provide you with the expertise to achieve your goals. Without all of this, it may well be possible to produce a translation – but it will be an ineffective one at best and a risky one at worst.
It is for these reasons, alongside many more, that translation agencies are still standing firm after the onset of AI – and why they won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
Have you got any translation needs that you are unwilling to leave entirely in the hands of machine translation? Contact us today and we will be more than happy to work our magic on your texts, providing you with comprehensive advice on the best workflow for you and your needs.
Check out our services page or get in touch with us to learn more.
