Thanks for your comment and thank you also for being one of the very few people who will write that it is “OK” to use machine translation for certain tasks. I think so many business pounce on this subject to say that machine translations are the worst possible thing, and to be avoided at all costs. Of course you absolutely need a real person to write anything that brings in sales. And I actually prefer not to use translators but the corresponding professionals found locally. The quality is usually worth the effort in finding the right person.

But the reality is that machine translations have evolved dramatically since these arguments were first established. Even translators use machines to help them get the job done faster. Businesses need clear guidelines. It would be great to see some more people actually step up and give these guidelines, instead of the continual bashing of machine translations… This puts people off of going international. It creates all sorts of barriers.

If you are in business and actually selling things to people who speak different languages, you learn pretty fast that you need natives to write all of your sales and marketing copy… and a native who knows what he or she is doing. And don’t forget your legal documents. I have seen so many scholarly translations by “humans” trying to sell, and they were just as bad.

With some international experience, it is fairly easy to know when you can consult a machine translation and when you need a human one… and if a translation agency is or is not the best choice.

When I get emails in foreign languages that I do not speak, I use Google translate – I do not rush to find a cheap translator. And it has worked well all the time.

But if you try to “machine translate” English into Finnish (a Fenno-Ugric language), the result is often totally incomprehensible. I would, therefore, still recommend the use of a human to polish the results if you intend to publish your translated text. Yes, I know, cost and manpower… but it is unavoidable.

Of course, if you’re using machine translation for your own business intelligence — to find out what a foreign-language website is about, for example — then even the low-end products will do fine.
.-= Kimmo Linkama´s last blog ..Do your documents portray a consistent brand? =-.

Translation Tools
Recently I had yet another request about whether businesses can use free translation software tools.  This last inquiry came from an American without any foreign language exposure.
She had always been told to avoid translation softwa….