Machine Translation – A Good or Bad Idea for Your Business?
First and foremost it should be said that, in general, translators are not against machine translation. In fact, most use some form of machine translation as a starting point for their translations. However, the wisdom and effectiveness in using machine translation as the only source of multilingual communication for your business depends entirely on the situation.  For example, recently a French newspaper called La Tribune, decided to put their publication online in English, German, Spanish, and Italian using only machine translations. So far, the outcome has not been favorable, as the automatically generated translations turn out awkward at best and highly cryptic at worst. One writer, Betty Carlson, provided the following review: “I could spend all day here – but not to get the financial news from France.â€Â If you’d like to read more of her article and opinions, you’ll find it at http://blog.languagetranslation.com/public/item/236052.  So, when is machine translation still an effective option? When the multilingual communication and quality thereof can be very basic and still accomplish its purpose. However, for anything that communicates a larger message – press releases, websites, publications, and the like, it’s smart to guard against being misunderstood. In such situations, it’s best to go with an experienced translator and make machine translation a part of the process instead of a process in and of itself.
Happy Birthday, USA!
In honor of Independence Day on July 4th, I would like to include a small piece of the preamble of the Declaration of Independence as a quiet reminder of the principles this country was built upon.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.â€
In addition to being one of the most recognized sentences in the English language, it’s also among the loveliest. Its message is both concise and powerful. Thus, I invite anyone who chooses to read this to think about what this means to you and what you can do to continue the legacy left to us by the founding fathers in insuring and promoting the life, liberty, and happiness of yourself and others.