Google Translate is an online automatic translation service much appreciated by users but which, compared to a professional translator, certainly has many limitations .
People often rely on Google Translate to translate words, short sentences but also entire texts. The convenience of this tool is certainly due to the immediacy of the translation and the availability of over 100 different languages.
However, it is a literal translation service that does not take the cultural context and the various linguistic nuances into account. The final result is therefore often imprecise and inconsistent , if not even with important errors.
For this reason, especially when dealing with complex texts, official documents or you want to be guaranteed of the result, the best solution is to rely on a professional translator.
In fact, human translation manages to grasp the nuances of meaning of the source text and transpose them effectively into the target language.
How do machine translation services work?
Automatic translation , or machine translation , is a process through which a computer program analyzes a text and translates it into another language without human intervention.
Machine translation systems , of which Google Translate is certainly the most famous example, are based on statistical functions that analyze and cross-reference texts already translated and available online.
Subsequently, the most relevant statistical samples are processed by the algorithms to create patterns that can be reused in the future to translate similar texts.
The weaknesses of Google Translate
As we have already seen, the biggest limitation of Google Translate is that of being an automatic software.
Here are other disadvantages to take into consideration and why you should prefer a professional translator:
- It is too imprecise a tool
- It does not capture the nuances of meaning and idioms
- It does not disambiguate homophones (words that are written and pronounced in the same way but have a different meaning) because it is not able to analyze the context in which they are used
- It can distort the meaning of the text and make the translation incomprehensible or incorrect
- It does not consider the linguistic and cultural context, nor the changes of register in the text (for example, spoken language vs legal text)
- It works on a statistical basis and does not predict
- a real reading of the source text
- It lacks terminological coherence
- Returns unprofessional translations
- If used to translate the texts of your website it can damage your SEO positioning due to poor translation.
The advantages that a professional translator offers
Technology increasingly offers innovative and effective services. However, in the field of translation, there are limits beyond which he cannot go.
Let’s see what the advantages of a translation carried out by a professional translator are.
Localization and transcreation
When translating it is important to always take into consideration the source and target context.
For example, a word or saying that has a certain meaning in one culture may have a completely different meaning in the target language.
An expert translator will know the habits and customs of different countries, will be able to grasp the specific cultural references of the source culture and also transmit them into the target language. Sometimes even compromising and slightly modifying the text to ensure that the reader of the translation is able to grasp a reference that is unfamiliar in their own language and culture.
Localization acts not only at the word level, but also takes into account the need to adapt , for example, the packaging or branding of a product, and can even be applied to the choice of colours, etc.
Localization can therefore also make use of a transcreation process when it is necessary to completely change the name of a product or slogan.
In fact, transcreation could be considered as a sort of “creative translation” as it requires the message to be adapted from one language to another , not necessarily translating word for word.
Both localization and transcreation are two types of translation that are more sophisticated and cannot be performed by a machine translation service, but which necessarily require human intervention.
Quality
Relying on a professional translator is a guarantee of quality.
The goal of machine translation services is to provide immediate translations that are useful in everyday situations, such as facilitating communication during a vacation.
Unfortunately, however, these services do not guarantee 100% correct translations.
A professional translator, with study and experience behind him , will provide an impeccable translation.
Conclusions
Automatic translation is very useful and helps us resolve many linguistic doubts every day.
Despite this, our advice is to rely on certified and specialized translators especially to translate official texts and working documents.
