¿Cómo se dice "disaster" en español? The U.S. national healthcare exchange website launch has been plagued with problems in more than just English.
As thousands found out this winter, “CuidadoDeSalud.gov” was considerably less fluent than it needed to be to serve Spanish-only populations in the U.S.
The Spanish version of the enrollment website provides a cautionary tale on the topic of localization, machine translation (MT), and why quality assurance is a must.
Sometimes when I tell people my company helps companies increase their global reach through language translation services, I’m met with a skeptical grin.
“Is that going to be around much longer?” they say. “I thought Google Translate and other automated translation tools were making that kind of thing obsolete.”
And here’s one of the reasons Machine Translation (MT) is such a complex and contentious topic. Yes, it is can be a powerful tool for businesses rapidly looking to adapt to foreign markets. Yes, it can drive down costs and speed projects along. But applied to the wrong projects in the wrong way, it can have just the opposite effect.
Machine translation, or MT as we call it around here, has changed the way translation agencies do business. Far from the error-prone technology it once was, MT has recently become a viable way to produce workable translations — though, not without some risk.
Mashable recently published an article about a newly launched translation tool that marries MT technology with speech-recognition technology. Our take on the article follows, and we'd love to hear what you have to say. Read on and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
As Acclaro gets ready to celebrate our 10th anniversary, we're taking a look back at some trends that have changed the way we do business today.
Throughout the history of the translation industry, human translation has always been the best way to get the best quality. Over the past ten years, however, machine translation has matured into a viable solution for more and more industries. Translation is not just cryptography. Language is often a fluid and illogical medium and good translation requires fluent knowledge and careful attention to detail and nuance, something that computers just don't do very well. However, that doesn't mean they aren't trying...or at least, getting better.
Machine translation. It sounds simple, right? Rather than use a human translator, you put the burden on a computer. How hard could it be?
That depends, of course, on how much you value making sense from what you’ve translated. And that depends on what — and how much — you’re translating in the first place.
Machine Translation (MT) is a powerful and evolving solution to the complexities companies face when they must quickly and inexpensively make large amounts of information available to international audiences.
In this six question Q&A we’ll give you the “nuts and bolts” (if you will) about the current state of MT and how it might help you save time and money on your next translation project.
As a translation business owner, I come across a lot of industry colleagues who fear Google's machine translation initiative.
It's a natural, but unfounded, response.
Our business thrives on cross-border commerce. A great translation tool — whether Google’s or another — will lower the barrier to communication across borders. This should be good for individuals and business while preserving language diversity as a key ingredient to multiculturalism.
Machine translation tools today can inexpensively produce draft translations that (while often inaccurate and sometimes humorous) are useful for personal and even business communication.
Still, the value that B2B translation service firms provide to businesses goes well beyond this basic draft-quality output. Companies hire translation professionals for many reasons that will not go away anytime soon.
Some examples include:
Smart, fun and useful. Acclaro shares news and tips on translation, localization, language, global business and culture.