Running a business is expensive, especially when you’re expanding into a new territory and translating your website into one or more foreign languages so it can be tempting to cut costs by using a free, automatic translation service such as, Google Translate.
However, doing so can be more costly to your business in the long term and might even damage your reputation in a new market.
After all, first impressions are important and if customers notice lots of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and translation inaccuracies on your new website or marketing materials, they’re less likely to trust your brand and purchase your products.
Below you’ll find some pros and cons to using an automatic machine translation so you can decide what is best for your website.
Machine Translation
Let’s be honest, most of us have used Google Translate at some point in our lives whether it be while helping the children with their homework or checking what a phrase means while on holiday abroad, it can come in really handy in certain situations.
However, machine translation is far from perfect, and we’ve all seen the examples of poorly translated documents or websites.
Machine translation has evolved over recent years, becoming more accurate and with more language pair options, and even translation providers now use specialist machine translation tools to assist with their translations, especially for repeat translations as this helps to reduce costs for clients and increases turnaround time.
While the machine translation tools that translation providers use are similar to the Neural Machine Translation used by Google, they are overseen by a human translator then edited, and proofread, to check for technical accuracy and linguistic consistency.
Pros and Cons of Using Google Translate to Translate a Website
PROS
• Inexpensive – Google Translate offer some free, basic translation tools which can get you started on translating your website. They also offer varying levels of paid translation services (including AI translation) which can improve on accuracy compared to the free service.
• Accessible – anyone with an internet connection, a smartphone, laptop or desktop can access Google Translate’s services, from anywhere in the world.
• Quick and Easy – depending upon the amount of content you need translating, Google Translate can be fast and easy to use.
• No language skills required – you don’t need to be a polyglot to use Google Translate (but it might help with editing and proofreading)
• Many language options – there are hundreds of language pairs available on Google Translate but be aware that some are more accurate than others.
CONS
• Reduced Accuracy – translating a website using Google Translate, especially one that has technical terminology or lots of varied content, isn’t likely to give as accurate a translation as a human translator. This is because machines don’t deal with linguistic nuance, colloquial difference, or cultural variances.
• Minimal Localization – translating a website is essential for an overseas market, but localization is even better. Localization adapts all aspects of a website including, currencies, dialect, number formats, dates, cultural factors, and so on, so that the language used makes the website appear as if it has been created specifically for a particular audience. Google translate has limited capacity for this type of in-depth language service.
• Brand Damage – we have already discussed the limited accuracy when using tools such as Google Translate, but it is the damage this low-level accuracy can do your brand that really matters. Clients and customers often judge by first appearances and if your website is littered with grammatical and linguistic errors, they are more likely to click away from your site than continue browsing or make a purchase.
• Formatting Challenges – dates, phone numbers, addresses, weights and measures, currencies, and so on, all need to be formatted differently depending on the location and language. A human translator (using localization) will understand these challenges and adapt your website accordingly, Google Translate won’t!
• Low Cultural Adaption – it isn’t just numbers and currencies that alter depending upon the location. Factors such as religion, politics, society, colloquial language, and other cultural nuances can be vastly different, even within one country or one dominant language. For example, the Arabic language has over 20 different dialects and is the dominant language in 26 countries, yet each culture is different and must be considered within the translation process.
Your website is often the first port of call for potential customers and should reflect your brand values.
A cheap translation isn’t the best option if you’re looking for accuracy, consistency and reliability – your website (and your customers) deserve better.
Contact us now at Creative Word and we’ll explain how we can help you get the website translation you really want.
