Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.- Anthony Burgess
The world has shifted into a new dimension. With the presence of Covid-19 Pandemic, the digital world has gained dominance over the physical one. The online market has been vending two digits profit recently. The coming of age market will spin digitally. These challenging times have flourished the digital market, and rightly so.
When the marketing of your business depends highly on digital media, it’s important to work out the intricacies of your website. And if you are a global service provider the work increases two fold. Website translation and website localization are important part of your marketing strategy. The language and cultural diversity persisting worldwide, does not allow you to use a single minded approach. With the diverse nature of your prospective and their demographics, it’s important for you to put in well researched content and connect with them.
Website translation is a basic way to connect and reach out to your targeted consumer base. Making your content available in various languages does not only expand your market reach, but it also helps to gain attention of native language speakers. However, website translation is not an easy task, its does not mean to just convert the content from one language to another. It is a comprehensive process that translates your content in multiple languages in such a way that it puts forthyour message in an appropriate and efficient manner.
The multi linguistic translation requires accuracy by translators, while it isn’t a difficult job for certain languages. It certainly is more difficult for others.
UNDERSTADING WEBSITE TRANSLATION BY HUMAN LINGUISTIC EXPERTS
A translator is a reader, interpreter and creator all in one.-Bijay Kumar Das
Translation is the end result of a holistic process. It isn’t just converting the word from one language to other but much more as rightly pointed out in the above quote.
These translations are done by people who are experts in various languages. Human translators are preferred by many companies due to theirunderstanding of context. The knowledge of language along with proper understanding of the tone of content makes human translators perfect for this job. However, it’s not all glittery with human translation. This may take time and there is also a scope for errors.
The pros and cons of human translation
- Holistic approach
The translations done by humans are more than just word to word output, it creates a holistic content.
- Understanding context
Human translations keep a check on context of language;the translations are done considering how the tone might get interpreted in different demographics.
- Interpretation
It’s important to understand that usage of some words is either different or slandering in certain languages; one must keep in mind their interpretation in various languages.
- Time consuming
Human translations are time consuming. When compared to AI Translators average per word translations done by human are pretty low.
- Accuracy
Humans always have a higher scope of error; the accuracy level of translated content can be unsatisfactory.
- Emotional factor
Humans prejudice may affect translated content.
- Cost
It may be costly to aboard a number of linguistic experts for translating various languages
UNDERSTANDING WEBSITE TRANSLATION BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
AI Translations are done by software. Suchsoftwareis specially designed to translate various languages. It is a one door translation for all languages. AI Translations have gained momentum with the upgraded versions of translating software in market. Such translation is easy, cost and time effective. But one must keep in mind that replacing a human’s mind is not an easy task. AI has shown tremendous improvements, no doubt, but it also comes attached with several repercussions of its own.
Discussed below are pros and cons of AI translations
- High accuracy
AI Translation is mostly error free. It can translate Korean or Chinese characters with ease and without many errors. This is an important quality and thus makes it reliable for translations.
- Time
AI Translations take much less time than humans. It makes it easy to deliver content on time and commit for more projects. As a consumer of translation service, customers get more time to review their content before uploading it.
- Cost effective
Since AI translation software have in feed many languages in its data, one doesn’t have to hire various language experts. Its saves cost of recruitment for service providers and ultimately affecting the price for consumers.
- Multiple languages
Installing of a software programme helps in translating websites in multiple languages. The number of languages a single software can translate is huge.
- Understanding context
An AI System doesn’t easily catch the tone of content. It efficiently provides word to word translations but often ends up with a messy content. The context in one language may be portrayed in a different manner in others and thus AI lack drastically in understanding this.
- Cultural differences
An AI translation might not understand the culturally appropriate content. Its final product may contain word or phrases that are inappropriate in several demographic regions.
WILL AI TRANSLATORS REPLACE HUMANS?
It is of immense importance to understand that neither human nor AI can thrive alone. Both have to be considered as a part of same package to achieve best results. Both AI Software and humans can keep check on the errors by other and together bring forth best content translations for the users.
Humans have a critical understanding of the context; this understanding of nuances is an essential part of language translation. There are several words that have multiple meanings or synonyms. But in certain context only one appropriate term can be used to replace. Sometimes non-contextual use of words changes the entire meaning of text. Such issues are common with AI Translations. But, with human translations such errors can be easily avoided. Thus, even with the latest upgraded software complete takeover by AIs seems farfetched as of now.
We have listed the pros and cons of AI and human translation so that you can make an educated decision on what floats your boat.
Meta title- Should website translations be done by humans or artificial intelligence?| Alphadata leads
Meta description: Website translations by both human and AI have their own pros and cons; this article is a deep dive into understanding their co-existence.
