Human VS Machine Translation: 2024 Guide To Bring You To Understand It
We believe that most people will use machine translation, especially Google translation. When it comes to translation, you have two options: machine translation or human translation. It has always been a topic of debate whether to use machine translation or human translation.
Translation can be one factor to consider to enter a new market. It helps to bring your products or services to another market that only knows another language. But it is important that the documents you translated is accurate to bring the correct info to your target audience.
Using machine translation or human translation has different pros and cons. The pros and cons play an important role when deciding which to use. We will discuss the pros and cons of machine translation and human translation in this article, helping you to make a better decision.
Pros Of Machine Translation
Pros Of Machine Translation
1.Speed
The speed of machine translation is definitely faster and can’t be beat by human translation. This is because translation done by machine is almost instant. No matter how long or how difficult is your document, once you key in your content, it will be translated within seconds.
2. Lower Cost
Lower cost is another benefit for machine translation. Compared to human translation, using machine translation have lower cost. Most machine translation are free, such as Google Translate.
There are also paid version machine translation, the benefits depend on the individual machine translation. Translation tools such as deepl has free and paid version. However, the cost will still be lower than hiring a translator to translate your documents.
Machine translation has lower cost due to it translate instantly, while human translation will need to spend time translating the documents.
3. Translate All Your Content
One issue that you may be worried about will be human translators missing part of your documents or missing one file if there are many files given.
But for machine translation, you will be copying and pasting to the translation software. The software will scan your documents and translate the whole document without missing.
Cons Of Machine Translation
1.Poor Accuracy
The accuracy of machine translation may be improving, but it doesn’t mean it is 100% accurate. Machine translation can translate single word or short sentence accurately. But if it involves a whole paragraph, the expectation may not be there.
Machine translation still can’t translate idiom well. When it comes to complex sentence structures, it may not understand the sentence and won’t translate accurately. You will still need to proofread the translated documents after using machine translation.
2. Machine Translation Doesn’t Understand The Context
When doing translation, it is important to ensure that the meaning of the sentence is as close as the meaning of the original sentence. But certain part of the document may not be understood by the machine.
For example, jokes and idioms can be hard for machine to translate. When translating jokes and idioms, you will need to understand the meaning before you translate. But the machine may not be able to pick up the meaning and may direct translate the word accordingly.
It may lose the meaning if you direct translate a joke or an idiom. Not only that, it may not be culturally appropriate too.
Pros of Human Translation
1.Accuracy
Compared to machine translation, human translation will provide a more accuracy translation if you find the right person. A same word may have different words to use in another language and you need to use the right word in the sentence. Machine translation may not be able to catch the original meaning while human can pick the right word to use in the sentence.
2. Creativity
Sometimes, translation will need to have a bit of creativity, especially for idioms, cultural reference and even marketing documents. For example, idioms in English may not have an idiom in Chinese, translator may come out with a bit of creativity to translate it.
For marketing materials, creativity is necessary. This is because marketing materials will need to attract people. Translator who are focus on marketing materials will have more creativity to translate the material better.
Cons Of Human Translation
1.Costly
The cost of human translation will be higher than machine translation. You can find free machine translation tools, but you will need to pay for human translation. There are professional translation company and also freelance translator. Each charge differently.
The charges for human translation depend on how individuals charge. Some charge per words while others may charge per hour.
2. Time Consuming
Human translation will be time-consuming. Unlike machine translation that can instantly translate your documents, human will need time to translate your documents. This is also one factor that affects the cost.
The time needed for your translation project depends on the complexity of your project. The more complex your document is, the longer it will take. Finding one that can do your translation project is also an issue as the translator may have other jobs on hand.
Human Translation Or Machine Translation?
Whether to use human translation or machine translation depends on your needs. If your translation job needs to be done professionally to present to your business partners or customers, it is best to find a professional translator. Be prepare to allocate a budget for your translated project.
If it is for your own use, you can use the machine translation to help you understand what is the document about. It won’t cost you much especially if you are using occasionally. There are plenty of free translation tools around.
There’s a possibility of mixing human translation and machine translation. If you are bilingual, you can use the machine translation to assist you and amend it as you do your proofreading. Of course, it is still better to approach a professional translator to help you with your translation project if you need it done professionally.
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