You have made the decision to translate your website for appeal to other cultures – but how do you go about selecting a translator? Should you insist on a costly human translation for your business translation or should you run your site’s content through one of those slick, automatic translation engines?
Automated translation techniques have been evolving since the early 1960s and we have made tremendous advances. Today there are companies that perform machine translation of, for example, user manuals that are hundreds of pages long into multiple different languages. But what is the quality of these translations and can they serve as a quality business translation for your website?
Even though machines translating can save time and money if you have a lot of material, your website is your business face to your consumer and a top quality business translation of your marketing content is essential for reaching customers. Only an expert human touch can ensure the highest quality. Only a human, for example, can tailor the language to suit a specific generation, a specific regional culture or a regional variation of the language. Consider that in Spain, a tortilla is an omelette made from egg. Whereas in Mexico, a tortilla is a flat, bread-like circle made of flour. When running the word “tortilla” through various Spanish to English translation engines, several of them arrived at the English translation of “tortilla.” But what if I am selling omelettes in Spain? There was no selection available in my machine translator for British English versus American English or Mexican Spanish versus European Spanish. When your business translation is vital to your bottom line, there is no substitute for a human translator in the loop.
Machine translation can be an easy way to scare off visitors. Not only that, but machines are not really useful for targeting cultural variations that speakers of other languages are likely to require. It is not just a matter of translating out of one language and into the other but of reaching people on a social and cultural level by using images and graphics that have meaning. Let’s go back to the omelette example. In England an omelette is most commonly made from egg, and may use ham and cheese to spice it up. So to reach an English audience you might use a picture of a plain omelette or a ham and cheese omelette on your site. In Spain, an omelette is most often made with potatoes, and so to reach a Spanish market you will do better with a picture of a thick wedge of a potato omelette. This type of subtlety can be the difference between a successful business translation of your website and an unsuccessful one. Culture is fundamental to translation.