The Problem with Online Translations
October 24, 2011
As the international market gets larger every day, translation is becoming more and more important.
It is no longer practical to only speak one language. The language barrier is causing many problems, especially with online translations. Although these translators can be good tools to find specific words (and only then if you triple check with other translators), it causes more harm than good.
As any high school or college student knows, and as the business world is finding out, online translators cannot be used for a direct translation. Often times, the resulting sentence makes no sense. One test is to put the sentence you want translated into a translator and then translate it back to its original language upon its change. By doing this, it is clear that online translators need to be avoided.
For example, the sentence “Keep it simple, get it right the first time and see online translation tools and a money taking, not money making option” translated into Spanish and then back to English becomes “Simple Manténgalo, consígale the right the first time and in line sees translation tools and a money that takes, nonmoney that makes the option.”
A lot is lost in translation and the result can be extremely harmful for companies. In fact, it can result in litigation if it disenfranchises users and members of a product. Similarly, a French speaker will be less likely to use a product or rely on a business if said business has a reputation of poorly translating into the French language. As the European Union gets stronger and continues to grow, this will be an increasing problem: businesses will attempt to save money by using online translators when in fact they should hire actual native speakers to translate. In the long run, it will save them more money than an online translator would.
The language world is expanding quickly- more and more countries are developing products and getting politically stronger. This means that translation is more important than ever and should not be taken lightly.