Do Language Translation Tools Really Help?

（Edited by freelance Chinese translator li – English to Chinese or Chinese to English translation services）

Language translation tools on the web seem to be very handy to foreigners who don’t speak English. As there are now such tools as this, people from different countries could now read a web content on their own language. Cool but not too cool. Machine translation, still, is far from catching the real essence of content because there are many sub-meanings that should be translated contextually.

For example, I have visited a site that offers free web translation and tried translating this small part from my previous article on PR into Spanish then from Spanish back to English. Here’s what happened:

Original content: Technology, as always known, is one of the greatest factors for competition. As a result, newer companies replace the older ones. For this, the fate of older industries would always be likely to fade or disappear. And so, what were left for PR practitioners caught in a dying company are questions often left unanswered—- What to do? Where to go? But the choice is always based within thinking and acting.

Translated content (Spanish-English): The technology, according to always the known thing, is one of the greatest factors for the competition. Consequently, newer companies replace oldest. For this, but of older industries she would be always probable descolora or one disappears. And for that reason, what were left for the taken doctors of the band in a company that died are to answer often left of the questions — what to do? Where to go? But the option is always based within the thought and to act.

See. According to this article, machine translation tools work by examining sentences and phrases such as adjectives and nouns and links these words to a target dictionary, where they modify and translate the words into a different chosen language. So basically, these machine incorporate translation word per word, which is exactly what happened in the above translated texts. What was missing above is the “human translation". The texts should be translated and edited close to what the content actually says.

If you’re a site who values content more, then I should say, do not rely on machine translations. If you do then your site will probably be a laughing content rather than a credible one. Content sites have more than one complex sentences that these machine translators could not do. In addition, aside from context meanings, machine translators could not translate cultural languages. By this I mean, languages that are set and used in a specific country. For example, there are many slang words that are not available in many online dictionaries. Language in context of culture includes idioms and figures of speech.

Translations have long been a problem in bridging nations. There are specific words in a language that are not available in other languages. Thus, we could not really say that a translated text is fully 100% accurate. So no wonder that translated books are very expensive than those that are not. If human translation still can’t figure out perfectly how barriers in language can be solved, then do not expect that machine translations will be prefect.