Machine translation has become a recent trend undoubtedly. It is one of the major trends in the translation and localization ecosystem. People are often indulged in discussions where they throw light on the benefits and shortcomings of machine translation. People on social media, blogs, newspapers, and conferences including businesses, government structures, and translation agencies, always try to prove how it is good for your business whereas others suggest how it could be a bad impact on the businesses.
If you are also one of the people who want to use machine translation services you should make sure that you adapt certain strategies to implement the machine translation and do not make rough use of it. As that might not take you anywhere.
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Investment In MT
Try having premium translation tools and don’t fall into a trap of free services. Machine translation is going to be an investment, so it should be wise. It is an integral part of the localization campaign and business strategy overall. That is important to consider unless you have your own natural language processing department. Machine translation providers can help you with that if you want to go for the premium packages. They help to determine the needs and see if the machine translation tools can help you to fulfill the requirements in terms of the system which could be rule-based, statistical, neural, or hybrid. This may further include pricing, and availability among others.
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Thorough and brief market research
You should be working on your research and development. It should be thorough, brief, and precise. You might think that you have done enough research but actually, you’ll find out that the market has a huge alternative so you have to come up with better market research to stay competitive. Make a list and shortlist the MT vendors that best fit your needs and solution. Keep asking around and most importantly while choosing an MT solution try to reach the MT provider and ask for the list of criteria that they might consider in choosing an MT solution. This will help you to work on compiling a single list of the criteria that can help you with machine translation in the future. This further enables one to make a well-put decision based on the translation needs and requirements.
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Realistic expectations
You need to understand one thing machine translation is a system translation that has its own way of working and functioning. It could get good with the normal content and translation and might not excel in the technical translation services. No matter how it is designed and developed and despite initial training, it is not going to go any extra mile to facilitate you. In order to make the most of the MT you need to invest time and money. You should also be realistic with the machine translation and its performance. Machine translation is not good in context and flow. It breaks the text and translates the content into words. You should also consider going for post-editing services.
Bringing acquaintances in the translation field and translation agencies can also help in making a difference. Their support, opinion, and collaboration can help you with the selection of MT tools and the way you use these. You should also be mindful of the fact that machine translation can either be a success or a failure depending on the requirements and needs.
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Using MTPE services
Make sure you hire translators, freelancers, and vendors for the MTPE services. MTPE stands for machine translation post-editing services. You should be bearing in mind that this role asks for the post editor. Translators can also help with machine translation, its use for the significant role, and the level of accuracy it can offer. Machine translation despite evolution and improvements is not yet ready to be sent as it comes. The translation has to be checked and edited by professional translators and proofreaders.
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Collaborating with translators and agencies
You should collaborate with translators and agencies. Be mindful of the fact that machine translation alone cannot help with your translation needs and you’ll have to hire translators or translation agencies so that they can integrate the MT and neural machine translation services for better quality and consistency in the translation. The translation by a machine usually has no context and is often into broken sentences. The accuracy and quality are also compromised. Hence the meaningful translation of the content is super important. The human translators will have to jump in for better review and editing. Also, MT can not be trusted with professional technical translation services and would need real translators.
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Don’t rely on Just MT
Machine translation is not to be relied on totally. It needs human supervision. You should be vigilant while using it and don’t rely on it too much. If you think you can use machine translation and can ace it all you are mistaken. The text which is translated through a machine is not considered final and presentable before you get it checked by linguists and experienced professionals. Not fixing the errors and mistakes can bring sheer embarrassment. So make sure you understand the risks involved in machine translation and as suggested above you should set the strategy to use it with a human translator.
Conclusion
Machine translation has evolved all these years for the better. However, machine translation tools are yet not ready to be relied on fully. Using it in moderation with human translators can not only speed up the process but can also help in consistency and precision. It is important to use it the right way and work in a strategic manner.