Human translation is necessary when conveying written text into other languages. People understand the nuance of word choices, sarcasm, idioms, and humor. Although machine translation has recently made great advancements, there is no substitute for human translators…or is there?
Whether clients are aware or not, machines are often used to help professional translators parse text into shorter segments, create client glossaries based on translation memories, and help translate repeated words automatically. This is not to say that human translators aren’t doing their jobs. They are finding ways to do things faster. There are CAT tools to help them do this. CAT stands for Computer Assisted Translation. This helps with consistent terminology for specific clients. It also helps with overall quality and increased productivity by pre-translating using a translation memory.
Completely human-powered translation, while certainly useful, is not scalable for large projects with tight deadlines and limited resources (available translators and funds). Enter human-edited machine translation, also known as MT + PE (machine translation plus post-editing). As I mentioned, the human touch must be added to the translation process to help improve the overall quality of the resulting message. There are lots of funny, shocking, and cringe-worthy examples on the internet of bad machine translations that have not had human editors as part of the process. Also, whether using human-powered or machine translation, it is important to have an editor and/or proofreader as part of the process.
A simple example of a translation that was not proofread in a low-stakes situation was seen at an international supermarket in Chicago. The store was selling broccoli, but the handwritten sign read, “bloccoli” which got the point across, but was misspelled. Such mistakes aren’t as cute when the text is used in advertising campaigns, on a website, billboard, etc.
Human-edited machine translations are faster, less expensive, and more scalable than fully human-powered translations. The resulting text will be understandable in the target language. The downside is that there may be some non-native sounding sentences in the resulting message.
In summary, human-powered translation, editing, and proofreading, are the way to go when quality is of the utmost importance, the message will be client-facing, and when time and budget are not of concern. Human-edited machine translations are useful for internal documents and large volumes of text for which human translation, editing, and proofreading would neither be practical nor affordable. MT + PE is also helpful when a faster turnaround time is needed. As with everything, there are pros and cons.
The best translations are the ones that don’t seem like translations at all. Whatever you choose, please be sure to have a person be a part of the editing process. There is no substitute.
