Human Language Translation Service

Translingua is proud to be a 100% human language translation service. No matter which of the 6500+ languages and dialects spoken worldwide you need documents translated to or from, your project is handled by a human language translation service team every step of the way. We refuse to use machine-based artificial intelligence (AI) software programs that are horribly inept at retaining the accuracy and integrity of a translated document. Our teams consist of:
Certified Linguists who are native speakers of the source language, and who also specialize in the industrial subject matter at-hand
Professional editors who are native speakers of the source language, have extensive knowledge of the target language, and are experts in the subject matter at-hand
Industry professional proofreaders with extensive experience spanning multiple decades who thoroughly analyze the target language document to ensure total completeness and correctness before we return it to you

LANGUAGE TRANSLATION SERVICES

Our ATA certified translators and professional editors do use a database of accepted terms and sentences they created and maintain. This makes the translation process efficient and consistent throughout each file. Just why is a human language translation service so important? Let’s answer this by discussing the problems with machine translation services, and why no language translation company should ever use them in any capacity.

Problems with Machine Translation

Machine Language Translation began in the 1950’s when researchers in the United States, Europe and Russia created algorithms to translate individual words from one language to another. Almost 70 years later, a litany of problems with machine translation still exist. The most significant of all problems with machine translation is contextual quality. Consider this:
The hundreds of thousands of words in any language can have various meanings based on the context in which the word is used. It is impossible for a machine translation program to take context into account. This problem is exponentially compounded with complex sentences, paragraphs and entire pages. However, a human language translator can easily understand the contextual connotation of individual words, as well as the complex sentences, paragraphs and pages those words combine to create.
A human language translation service is able to capture the cultural, emotional and communicative context of your source documents, and then accurately replicate this context in the target documents. The result is documents that read as though they were never translated from one language to another in the first place.

Other Machine Lanugage Translation Problems

A lack of contextual understanding is only one of several machine language translation problems. Other machine language translation problems include:

Lack of cultural sensitivity

It is essential to understand the values and norms of the culture a document is being translated for. Lack of understanding can result in inadvertently sending the wrong message, which can cause irreparable damage to business and social relations.

Causing more human work

Some translation companies use AI software to begin projects because they believe this saves time. However, it actually causes more time to be spent correcting contextual errors. Plus, if a translator misses those errors, the result can be culturally catastrophic.

It sounds like a computer

Language is a creative expression. It is impossible for machine translations to be ingenuitive or creative. This results in target documents that sound, feel and read as impersonal and inhuman as the artificial intelligence software program that translated them.

Choosing human language translator services negates problems with machine translation. A human language translator is both a scientist and artist, in that he or she has successfully mastered the precision of translation and the art of communication. At Translingua, our translators are also native speakers of the target languages, which means they fully understand cultural and communicative contexts. The result is a culturally appropriate, efficiently composed and psychologically engaging document on a human emotional level.

Case Study: Google Translation Services and Wikipedia

A perfect example of machine language translation problems comes by way of a major issue facing Wikipedia as a result of Google Translation Services. Although Wikipedia is globally accessible, it is still heavily English-based. Specifically, of the 5.5 million articles sitewide, only 15 of the 301 other (foreign) language editions have more than one million articles available to non-English speakers.

In early 2019, Wikipedia turned to Google Translation Services for help. Google is the most widely used machine translation tool in the world currently. However, things quickly went awry. For example, in an article discussing water delivery systems to villages, Google translated the English phrase “village pump” to the Portuguese phrase “bomb the village.”

This is only one of thousands of issues that have resulted in Wikipedia creating special admin rules to either block or undo recent machine translations entirely from the platform. In fact, these issues have become so normal and incredibly troublesome that the Indonesian Wikipedia community has formally requested Wikipedia permanently remove the Google Translation Services feature from its platform.

Although 70 years have passed since researchers successfully translated words from one language to another with machine software, even the “smartest” machines are not anywhere close to doing the job one proficient human language translator can…. and they might not get any closer in our lifetimes. Or, in the words of one Wiki Administrator who goes by the name Vermont, “Machine translation will NEVER be a viable way to make articles on Wikipedia.”

Translingua Human Language Translator Services

Since 1976, Translingua has provided our clients with accurate, reliable and ethical human language translation services in over 6500 languages and dialects in-use worldwide. In this time, we have learned a few things:

First, linguistic context is just too important to trust to a machine. Second, proper translation is just too difficult to trust to anyone other than certified translators and industry experts. And third, a highly qualified human language translator can do a much better job, and do it much faster, than a mediocre translator aided by faulty machine software programs.

These first-hand understandings translate to increased satisfaction and cost savings for our clients in both the short and long-term. Contact us to obtain a free quote, or to learn more about how Translingua’s human language translator services can benefit you.

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