Google Translate Sings
4th March 2016
Have you seen the Google Translate Sings: videos?
A YouTuber by the name of Malinda Kathleen Reese has gained popularity recently, after a number of her videos went viral across various social media platforms. One of the more popular ones that may have popped up on your Facebook wall is a version of Hello by Adele.
While no doubt amusing, the video and process behind it does help to illustrate the current limitations of machine translation. While the tech media are buzzing about the future of artificial intelligence and the suggestion that near perfect machine translation tools are just around the corner, the reality is that almost all documentation run through Google Translate or Bing will produce a bad translation at best, and unintelligible gibberish at the other end of the scale.
As previous discussed with respect to web content – What does using Google Translator mean for my website? – Google Translate simply isn’t of any use when it comes to commercial quality translation. While it may be tempting to go down the “free translation” route for web content, or any other material for that matter, the chances of receiving a commercially valid end-product are slim.
The consequences of using machine translation can vary, but doing so can reflect badly on your company and brand, if you’re sending material to international clients or suppliers that don’t make sense. There is also the real risk of the danger in giving your potential clients and customers misleading or incorrect information.
Having your documentation and marketing material translated by a professionally qualified linguist will always pay off. Given the ever increasing international market place that today’s communication networks bring, taking the time to get it right first time is increasingly important and essential to maintaining a competitive edge.
So if you or your company are looking to have your marketing material, manuals, web content or those very important proposals translated, simply ask Foreign Tongues translation for a quote and let us do the rest. As you can see, the dangers of using machine translation far outweigh the relatively small cost to getting the project completed correctly by a Foreign Tongues qualified, professional translator.
