Isn’t it great how computers are making the world smaller and bringing people together? 20 years ago, when I first learnt how to translate, none of the technology was around that we have now. I remember (as will other translators over a certain age) sitting with a Microsoft Word document, a giant multi-lingual dictionary, a pencil and a rubber working my way through a document laboriously translating it by hand (no joke!). It was a world away from how I work today. Nowadays, I sit at my computer with 2 screens, specialist translation software, and electronic online dictionaries. (My poor dictionaries are confined to propping up my laptop!) Sometimes I will be asked to use a machine translation (MT) engine, we all know them, the likes of Google translate, Microsoft Translate, or DeepL. You just pop the text in one box and hey presto!…out pops the text in whatever language you desire. Suddenly the entire world is at everyone’s fingertips, anyone can talk to anyone!
But do you use machine translation critically or do you just put anything and everything through an MT engine whenever you need a translation?
Have you ever considered if MT is actually the right tool for the job? Sure, it can produce some form of translation, but is the translation actually any good? How do you know?
What if the translation isn’t actually that good?
What would the consequences of a bad translation be?
If you are translating an important document e.g. for a legal or medical setting that could have implications for another individual, a machine translation might not be so advisable. Similarly, if you are a company advertising your product, you really need to be sure that the translation is correct before you publicise that translation (let’s face it, we’ve all seen the mistakes). There has also been a trend lately of students putting school and university work through machine translation engines before submission. Is this worth the risk? On the other hand, if you want to get the gist of an email or social media text MT is perfect. A machine translated text always stands out from a human translated one.
Finally did you know that anything you type into a free public MT engine will be kept and your information may be reused? Don’t enter private data such as your name, telephone number, address, or bank details into the engine. Please keep yourself safe. These details are not required to generate a translation and you can add them to the text after it has been translated.
If in doubt, always ask a professional translator, it’s better to be safe than sorry. If you do want to use MT but are concerned about security as a professional I (and others) subscribe to private engines that can be used on request (I do not use MT as a general rule). The private MT engine I use does not recycle translations without consent, so your information is completely safe. For more information on my GDPR and confidentiality policy please contact me.