Whether you are trying to start selling your products to new markets, localize your software, or simply need to be able to communicate with people in a language you don’t speak, there are many benefits of using machine translation. Machine translation is improving and has become so useful that even professional translators use it to make their work more efficient and less time-consuming.
There are many reasons why a company might need to use a language other than the one dominant in the area it operates. For instance, you may be trying to enter a new market or you may be collaborating with partners from other countries. Depending on your business and your goal, you may need to use another language to communicate with partners, you may need to translate part of your content or all of your content, or you may need to translate many more things, such as products or services descriptions, software interface, website and so on.
Aside from translators, in business, a so-called machine translation system, which combines human and machine skills to achieve a high-quality translation, is also used by many other people who can benefit from it, including localization managers, business owners, and more. For instance, after using machine translation software to translate the parts of the software that should be localized, a real person can work on it to make sure there aren’t any mistakes and to make it sound natural and native.
1. Reduced Costs
For many business owners, investing in a good software for machine translation can be very cost-effective. There is no doubt that a human translator can never be entirely replaced by a machine. However, machine translation can lower, minimize or maybe even eliminate the need for paying professional translators.
For instance, if you have to communicate with a business partner, you won’t need a real person to write a message. Instead, you can write it in your native language and let it be automatically translated.
Of course, if you are trying to enter a new market you’ll have to hire translators. Nevertheless, access to machine translation software can be very helpful since it will cut the time needed to complete a translation. And fewer hours spent on translating results in lower costs.
2. Improved Efficiency
Having an automatic translation almost instantly can help you save a lot of time, whether you are the translator or the business owner. Namely, machine translation will translate your entire article in less than a second. The translator’s job, rather than translation will become an editing job. The quality of the automatic translation will depend on the pair of languages (the original language and the target language), and the quality of the translation software. Businesses that don’t make sure that their content is well translated may end up with a bad reputation among the target audience.
Using a machine translation service can cut translation costs by as much as 25%. In addition to that, it can translate more kinds of content than a human can. However, not all languages are suitable for machine translation, so it’s important to test the tool before committing to it. The best way to decide if this service is right for your business is to start testing it out. The cost savings you’ll see will be immediately apparent.
The ability to translate faster not only will help you save money but will also allow you to provide content much faster. It makes translation easier in so many ways, and it’s also a great way to get translators to work on their projects and get more done. Finally, allowing them to finish a task faster, means that they will be able to start working on new projects, which may be crucial for your market entry, or your relationship with partners.
3. Improved Translation Quality
Even though a machine may never be as good at making the text sound more natural in a different language, human translation will also lack in some aspects compared to machine translation. Namely, a human translation will never be as good as machine translation when it comes to accuracy, orthography, finding the right terminology, and consistency. While a human translation can be error-free, achieving the highest quality possible will take much longer if the translator relies solely on their skills.
Bottom Line
Translation is crucial in business since, without it, it can be impossible to launch your brand in new markets or to collaborate with people from other countries. This is one of the reasons why so many MT providers have appeared on the market. Even though in some cases they shouldn’t be used on their own but rather in a system that combines it with human translation, machine translation can be incredibly beneficial for businesses.