Tips for Localizing and Translating your Business in Portuguese

To get the best results from your website localization or eLearning translation in Portuguese, here are some of the most important aspects to consider.

Spoken by over 279 million people worldwide, Portuguese is the sixth most widely spoken global language. Portuguese is the official language of nine countries. It is an official language in the Special Administrative Region of Macau, as the region was a Portuguese colony from 1557 to 1999 before being handed back to China. If you’re looking to grow your business internationally, there are a lot of good reasons to consider offering your customers Portuguese language support and a website localized in Portuguese

Obrigado

From Portugal to Brazil, this is how Portuguese speakers say thank you – Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

Why Translate to Portuguese?

Portuguese is one of the fastest-growing global languages. The language has grown from 65,064,027 speakers in 1921 to 258,003,327 today, a 297% increase over the past century. While the language is associated with the country of Portugal, Portugal itself has only around 5% of the world’s Portuguese speakers. Most Portuguese speakers are in Brazil, with around 211 million speakers. What makes the Brazilian market attractive for businesses is that it is the second-largest economy in the Americas, ranking 8th in terms of global nominal GDP. Brazil is also the 10th largest eCommerce market in the world. 

In terms of creating a localization strategy, it has become a lot easier since written Portuguese became fully standardized in 2015. What does this mean exactly? The Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement was created to help establish one single common spelling for all Portuguese-speaking countries. While the discussions that led to the agreement started in the 90s, it required prolonged deliberation, edits, and a six-year transition before finalising it in 2015. This standard ensures that the spelling of the majority of Portuguese words is consistent throughout business and education globally. 

History of the Portuguese Language

Flag

Portuguese imperialism, which began in the 15th century, helped to spread the Portuguese language to different areas of the globe. – Photo by Luís Feliciano on Unsplash

Portuguese originated from Latin and developed in the Western Iberian Peninsula. Roman soldiers brought Latin to the area around 216 BCE. The oldest written records of Portuguese date back to the 9th century; at the time, they still contained many Latin phrases. After Portugal became independent in 1139, Portuguese began to become more and more prevalent. It quickly became the common tongue of the people. In 1290, the first Portuguese university opened in Lisbon, and from there, Portuguese was given its name and was made the official language of the country. 

When the Portuguese empire began to colonise in the 15th century, it brought the Portuguese language to different parts of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, becoming the lingua franca in some of these new regions.

European Portuguese vs Brazilian Portuguese

Chat bubble

Brazilian Portuguese has some dialectical differences from its European parent. – Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

While the written language may be standardised, it doesn’t mean there aren’t other differences to consider when considering a marketing translation in Portuguese for your business. While each region can understand the other, there are substantial differences between the European and Brazilian dialects.

Pronunciation Differences

  • European Portuguese generally doesn’t pronounce the letter ‘e’ if it is between two consonants. Brazilians have a more open pronunciation compared to Portugal. 
      • ie. The word telephone in Brazil (telefone) would have every vowel pronounced, whereas, in Portugal, the first ‘e’ would be dropped and sound like “tlefone”
  • Brazilian Portuguese words that have di or ti are pronounced like the English sound of gi and chi.
  • Brazilians pronounce the “L” sound with a “U” sound. Making a word like Brazil sound more like Brásiu. 

These pronunciation differences are especially important if you need an eLearning voiceover for your content and use foreign language voice-over talent on your website or platform. 

Formal vs Informal Speech

There are noticeable differences in how the pronoun “you” is used in each region. Portugal uses tu informally, and você is used formally. In Brazil, however, both tu and você are used informally. 

Translator tip: When using você, conjugate the following verb in the third person. 

Spelling 

As mentioned previously, spelling has been standardized across the Portuguese language, but there are still some subtle differences that remain. Brazil is much more likely to take influence from English, whereas Portugal has remained closer to its Latin roots.

  • Brazilians will use the same English spelling for media, whereas in Portugal, they will spell it mídia.

Grammar 

There are various grammatical differences between these two dialects, but here are the most notable.

  • European Portuguese speakers place their pronouns after the verb. Brazilians do the opposite.
  • Personal pronouns aren’t necessary for either dialect as the verbs are conjugated differently, but European Portuguese speakers are much more likely to omit them than Brazilian speakers. 

Portuguese in Other Countries

Just like there are differences between Brazil and Portugal, your localization strategy will need to consider other Portuguese markets you intend to target.

  • In African countries, Portuguese adopts different contexts both culturally and grammatically. These regions often adopt and mix local languages and regional history.

Things to Consider When Creating a Localization Strategy for Portuguese

Even within the few examples in this article, it should be apparent just how important it is to have a localization strategy. A considered strategy ensures you get a quality translation that is culturally relevant for your brand in its new market. When coming up with a localization strategy in Portuguese, here are a few other additional tips to help get you started. 

  • Keep your target audience in mind at all times. This will help drive your translation choices in your localization strategy.
  • Be aware of text expansion when translating to Portuguese; it tends to be longer, especially if translated from English or Chinese.
  • Avoid idioms on your website or in your eLearning course creation, as they don’t generally translate well.
  • Make use of high-quality translation services for all your business translations to ensure that your global vision and goals are achieved and that your brand and content are understood no matter which countries you take it to. 

Make Into23 your language and localization partner with our team of translation experts. Into23 has all the translation solutions to help your business reach the Portuguese markets or any global market that suits your business’s needs. Contact us today for a free quote and get started on your Portuguese localization expansion today.

Reach out to a Portuguese speaking audience and grow your business now! Get your Quote here

6 Creative ways to update your eLearning courses

eLearning voiceover

Image byTumisu on Pixabay

eLearning courses fit perfectly in today’s modern world and in comparison to traditional learning, eLearning has substantial benefits to both learners and employers. Students who take online courses have graduation rates that are 9% to 21% higher than students in a traditional education setting. Further, the use of eLearning for companies shows that when employees take eLearning training their retention rates increased by 25% to 65%. It’s apparent that eLearning has become an essential way of continuing education and skills in the 21st century but like all technology, to stay relevant and successful, eLearning courses and platforms need to be updated regularly.

Why you need to update your eLearning courses?

eLearning translation

Image by MUJU_pixel by Pixabay

eLearning content needs to stay up to date to stay relevant, this includes not only technological features but context and tone as well. Dated aesthetics or content won’t hold the attention of a young learner and to make a course successful they need to be catered to the modern generation.

In 2017, Adobe announced that it would stop supporting flash with a phase-out that started in 2020. The majority of eLearning courses in the early and mid-2000s were once built with Flash but now HTML5 is generally the standard used in many eLearning courses which also makes courses mobile friendly. The best eLearning platforms made this transition as soon as possible and the companies that missed out on updating their eLearning software found themselves with courses that their learners could no longer use.

Certified Elearning tranlation

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels

If you’re overdue for a revamp of your eLearning courses here are six areas to look into when updating your courses.

1. Modernize graphics and visuals

It may not seem like much, but visuals play a huge part in the success and retention of a course. If your course looks like something that should still be on dial-up you aren’t going to gain the attention of any modern learner. 

Take a look at your images and be sure that they represent your market audience in a modern way, that includes where the photos are located and what’s in them. For example, if you have a picture of a workplace and the people in the photos are sporting 90s attire and are using massive old school computers, you’ll want to give that a modern makeover. This also means having a look at your templates and designs up to date, so if your design has a MySpace feel, it’s time for an overhaul. This also applies to eLearning localization, if you are updating your courses to expand globally make sure that the content you update with is relevant to the localized audience, that your eLearning voiceovers match the dialect and accent, and that your eLearning translations are done by professional business translation services.

With that, evaluate your templates and get them back to basics with a clean and simple look and feel that will give them a more modern and timeless feel.

2. Varying your format 

If your course uses the same font throughout and follows the same format of plain content with a recap, it’s time to shake it up. Ditch the lists and bullet points and start including charts, graphs, and infographics. Infographics are especially useful for summaries as they are visually appealing and easy to read which increases retention.

3. Microlearning

Updating your old courses doesn’t mean you have to get rid of them, you can repurpose them into a microlearning library by breaking down the course into smaller sessions. This creates a microlearning library that allows access to concise content that is very accessible to learners. Microlearning libraries allow learners to jump in and quickly get the exact information they need with little hassle. 

4. Make them interactive 

When eLearning first kicked off most of the content on it was rather static and often consisted of the information, usually laid out in short paragraphs and bullet points, then followed by some sort of standard assessment. Since then, technology has broadened to allow for the creation of highly dynamic and interactive content. Ditch the multiple-choice for a simulation, make use of videos and create exams and content that allow learners to immerse themselves with the content, and give them opportunities to practice what they’re learning. 

5. Social learning

Find ways to connect your learners outside of their courses with the use of social media. Not only does it create a community but it offers continued means for your learners to expand on their knowledge, as well as create and collaborate. It ensures that your learners have a space to ask questions and foster new ideas. This is also really important if you have learners from around the world as it’s a great way to bring people together. 

 6. Entertain 

Are your courses entertaining? If you’re not entertained by the content, then chances are your learners won’t be either. Creating an enjoyable course experience is one of the best ways to ensure course success and knowledge attainment. Try to avoid using too much text and don’t shy away from humour by adding images, memes, a joke, or even a comic strip. Something that will break up the course and make your content more memorable. This is especially important if your target audience is a younger crowd. Just ensure that if you are localising your eLearning platform that you use media localization as not all graphics, memes, and jokes translate over to other languages and cultures. This is why it’s important to use eLearning localization services to make sure your courses reach your learners the way they’re meant to, no matter where they are in the world.

Need help taking your eLearning platform global? Into23 has all your global translation solutions with high quality translation services and multimedia localization services by certified legal translators. Contact into23 today for a free quote to get started. 

Why your company needs a legal translation partner

If you have a global company or are a company with global aspirations, legal translation services are needed to protect your business. Certified multilingual translation services ensure that your documents are correct and reflect your company regardless of region or language.

Did you know that over 50,000 companies today operate in more than one country? If you’re thinking about expanding into international markets, regardless of what type of business you’re running, it’s important to have an expert legal translator. Having a legal translation partner or outsourcing services is important for keeping your business running smoothly. Legal translation is a highly specialised field that ensures your business’s documents are in order no matter what localized market you’re working within.

What is included in legal translation?

require legal translations

Image from Pixabay – Contracts and binding agreements often require legal translations.

What exactly is included in legal document translation? If you’ve just started looking into these types of services, here are a few types of documents that often require translation services,

  • Contracts and commercial proposals
  • Purchase agreements
  • Service agreements
  • Technical documents and manuals
  • Financing agreements
  • Company by-laws
  • Patents, trademarks, and copyrights
  • End-user license agreements (EULA)
  • Application letters
  • Deposition records

Why legal translation is important?

legal translation is important

Photo by Fauxels from Pexels – Effective team communication is one reason legal translation is important.

Having your documents in order is hard enough in one language, let alone others. When companies look to go global or if they’ve acquired an international merger, their business documentation should be translated into the native language of the area where they’re working. This ensures that communication is seamless and that the policies, procedures, and brand are consistent across the board. Further, businesses’ legal documents need to be translated appropriately when localizing to avoid lawsuits, hold-ups, and serious misunderstandings that could jeopardize the businesses’ legitimacy.

Machine translations don’t offer quality or consistency

Not even today’s current machine translations are a match for the translations performed by translation experts. Only a real person can understand cultural nuances, regional differences, and specific legalities that a machine may misunderstand. Official document translation performed by high-quality translation services ensures that translation mishaps won’t happen. With that said, machine translation can be suitable for certain types of legal projects, such as large-scale discovery projects. Output from the machine translation process can then be enhanced by introducing a human editing stage to correct obvious machine translation post-editing errors.

Related: Why Google Translate isn’t effective enough for business

Accuracy And Efficiency 

Legal translations need to be completely accurate, and this attention to detail can only be provided by a legal translation expert, making it imperative that you have a translation partner for your global business. Not only is having a partner more efficient it also takes the guesswork out of your sensitive documents while providing the right tone and avoiding potential liabilities.

Why do you need legal translation services?

International translation companies can help expedite a business’s international goals while getting through the legal hoops of a new global region by ensuring that all your legal documents are in order no matter where you’ve expanded.

Timely delivery

Like anything in business, a quick turnaround is important, especially if you’re moving into a new market. When you have an experienced legal translation partner at your fingertips, they will know the language and region you’re working in and will have a translation memory database to work with that will allow for a quick turnaround on documents that will be professional, accurate, and relative to the business area you’ve expanded into.

Complex legal terminology

Legal jargon can be overwhelming and complex, even in one’s native language. Legal translators know how to maintain the essential legal specifics of a document from one language to another so that it is comprehendible and maintains all the critical legal meanings, thus avoiding any liabilities or potential misunderstandings when making business deals and arrangements in your new region.

Cost-effective

Professional legal translation services will already have the knowledge needed to get the job done effectively and efficiently, cutting down costs and guesswork. This means you can get back to what your business does best within its new area.

Project management

A good legal partner can effectively manage a translation project as they can allocate the right number of translators for the job and will be able to manage the project from start to finish.

Ethical

Google translate or other machine translation post-editing can never ensure that the documents they translate are confidential. Items such as non-disclosures and contracts are important documents that must be handled securely and efficiently. A legal translation service can ensure that your documents are kept private and that they are accurately translated into the languages that you require.

Into23 is perfectly positioned to be your legal translation partner. Into23 specialises in document translation services, localization translation services, website translation services, and more for your global business. Contact us today for a free quote, and become our partner today.

What are the main translation methods and techniques?

The process of translation may seem like a mere exchange of words and phrases from one language to another but as any quality freelance translator will tell you, there is a lot more to it than that. A good translator will use a variety of translation techniques and methods depending on the language it’s being translated into and the target market it’s aiming to reach.

Translation’s beginnings

The Gilgamesh on a partially broken tablet

A section of ‘The Gilgamesh’ on a partially broken tablet – Wikimedia

In history, the translation of writing goes back as far as the Mesopotamian era and is believed to have started with the epic Sumerian poem, The Gilgamesh, which was translated into a variety of Asian languages around the second millennium BC. The need for translation began to increase with the development of religious texts and theories. The word translation is derived from a Latin term that means “to bring or carry across”. The word metaphrasis in Ancient Greek, which means “to speak across” created the word metaphrase which was the first term for a “word-to-word” translation. As translation and translation studies became more common, defined techniques and methods took form. 

Translation methods and techniques

Vinay and Darbelnet Translation Technique

Vinay and Darbelnet – Time Toast

J.P. Vinay and J.Darbelnet were pioneers of translation studies as they created and published formalised translation procedures in 1958 with their book titled, Comparative Stylistics of French and English: A Methodology for Translation. It was one of the first times translation methods had been categorised and since it has become the basis of technique for modern multilingual translation services

Vinay and Darbelnet’s methods and techniques

While a translation method can be applied to an entire translated text, translation techniques and types of translation vary based on what elements will be translated. Vinay and Darbelnet detailed seven different techniques within two methods of translation.

Direct or literal translation method

This method is used when similar concepts and structures of the source language can be used in the translated language. Languages need to be similar in a variety of ways for these techniques to work as these types of translation techniques are not able to capture a lot of nuances found in language.

Borrowing technique  is a technique that involves borrowing a word from one language and using it in another. So the translator will make the conscious choice to retain a word while translating the rest of the sentence. You’ll often see this with English as the English language tends to borrow many words from other languages. While not explicitly a translation technique it is common with globally familiar words. 

Borrowing examples: sombrero, café, kimono, hamburger, kimchi

Calque technique  Many words don’t translate well into other languages, the calque technique is used by translators in this instance. A translator will coin and come up with a new word or term in the translated language. 

Calque examples: gratte-ciel in French is a calque of ‘skyscraper’.  An ‘Adam’s apple’ is calque of the French phase pomme d’Adam. Beer garden is a calque of the German biergarten

Literal translation technique – This technique is the most straightforward in that each word is translated directly. This is generally ineffective for languages that are not closely related and is generally only used with select legal or corporate translation.

Indirect or Oblique translation method

This method is most often used when languages and cultures are substantially different, such as English to Chinese translation. This method will usually change the structural or conceptual elements of the text to preserve its meaning.

Transposition – This technique involves a shift from one grammatical structure to another, usually with languages that have different grammar structures. 

Transposition example: Rendering a French noun with an English verb, Je l’ai vu avant la rentrée can be directly translated to English as  “I saw her before school started”, this changes the noun la rentrée into a verb.

Modulation – The modulation technique is extremely common in marketing when localizing into a new market. Modulation changes and adjusts the original text completely but it preserves the same meaning and patterns so that it is recognisable in target translated language. 

Modulation examples: Lebensgefahr in German means danger to life, whereas in English we would say “danger of death”. A literal translation of this phrase from English to German would sound odd and confusing to a German person. Another example is how French speakers refer to the top floor of a building as dernier étage which translates as “last stage” in English. A literal translation of this phrase from French to English would baffle many prospective English apartment buyers and renters.

Equivalence/reformulation  – Similar to modulation and also an essential technique for any localization strategy, this technique preserves the meaning of an expression or proverb by using something equivalent in the translated language. 

Equivalence/reformulation examples: The English phrase “It’s pouring,” which refers to a downpour of rain doesn’t translate into German but the meaning can be altered to give the same effect, es regnet in Strömen (It rains in streams).

Adaptive – This technique is a sort of cultural substitution or equivalent in that one cultural element is replaced with one that will be better suited and understood in the language and region it’s being translated to. 

Adaptive examples: Baseball or NFL football in the US 🡪Football in England

Choosing the best translation technique 

Out of these basic and common techniques, how do you know what translation tools, translation techniques or methods are the best for your business or localization strategy? Every business, strategy and approach is different so the best way to get a return on your investment is to use certified translation services. Quality translators will assess your documents, software, website, eLearning platform or eCommerce software to ensure that your business successfully reaches your target market and audience. 

Into23 offers high quality translation services in any language your business needs. Contact us today for a free quote so we can help your business enter new global markets and enterprises.

Get Better Results when reaching a Chinese Audience

Important things to consider if you’re localizing your business in Chinese

Chinese is one of the most important business languages. It is second only to English in terms of being the most spoken, so here are a few important things to know while creating your localization strategy.

With a large population and a growing number of middle-class consumers, the Chinese market has been a new hotspot for businesses. The Chinese market can be a successful market for your business if it’s done right. It’s easier than ever to crack this market with the growth of technology, online shopping, eCommerce translation services, and eLearning platforms. However, there are some major points to consider if you want to localize for a Chinese area or region, as there are many pitfalls when localizing to Chinese.

localize my business in chinese - hong kong

Hong Kong signs – Photo by Katie Manning on Unsplash

History of the Chinese language and its different types

Chinese is an old and diverse language. In mainland China alone, around 70 million people belong to 55 different minority groups, each with their dialect and some that don’t even have a distinguishable written form. However, with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, Mandarin was chosen as the official language of the country. Today, more than 70% of the Chinese population speaks Mandarin. 

Written Chinese

localize my business in chinese - calligraphy

Calligraphy – Photo by chuanyu2017 on Pixabay

Written Traditional Chinese is around 6000 years old and is the oldest written language in the world. Cantonese speakers generally still use these characters, as do Mandarin speakers in Taiwan. Mandarin speakers in China use Simplified Chinese characters. Simplified characters have been around significantly less than their traditional counterpart as they were formalized at the beginning of the People’s Republic of China. The People’s Republic of China was formed in 1949, and at the time, the majority of Chinese could not read or write. To improve literacy, Mao Zedong initiated a new system of Simplified Chinese, simplifying around 2000 Chinese characters by reducing the number of strokes used for each character. Simplified Chinese was first used in 1956

While there are various spoken dialects of Chinese, these are the two major forms of writing. This is handy as even if the spoken dialect is different, Chinese can generally communicate through writing. 

Different dialects

Seven major dialects are used in China and its Special Administrative Regions (SARs). To reach the Chinese market with your business, you need to know where your target market is and what Chinese form is used there.

Dialect Region Spoken
Mandarin (Putonghua) Most of mainland China, Taiwan, Macau
Cantonese/Yue Hong Kong, Macau, Guangzhou (Canton), and Wuzhou.
Min Fujian province and parts of Guangdong, Zhejiang, Hainan, and Taiwan
Wu Zhejiang province, Shanghai, southern Jiangsu province, parts of Anhui and Jiangxi provinces.
Xiang Most of the Hunan province, the counties of Quanzhou, Guanyang, Ziyuan, and Xing’an, northeastern Guangxi province.
Gan Jiangxi province
Hakka Northeastern Guangdong, adjoining regions of Fujian, Jiangxi, Southern Hunan, and the older generations of Hong Kongers in the New Territories. In Taiwan, Hakka is spoken by some in the Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli parts of the country.

Related: What’s the Difference Between Mandarin and Cantonese?

Important considerations regarding the different dialect types

  • Cantonese is the main dialect spoken in Hong Kong. Traditional Chinese characters are used for writing. While many Hong Kongers can speak Mandarin and use Simplified Chinese characters, if you are localizing for this region, you should consider using Cantonese and Traditional Chinese characters.
  • In Taiwan, they speak Mandarin and write with Traditional Chinese characters. Both Taiwan and mainland China use Mandarin, but they have developed different terminology and writing styles.  

All of this variation within the Chinese language necessitates using the best Chinese translation services company to guarantee that sufficient research is done to develop a translation and localization plan that matches your strategy for entering this lucrative market.

Things to consider when creating a localization strategy for Chinese 

localize my business in chinese - tiananmen square

Tiananmen Square – Photo by wu yi on Unsplash

Know the culture, know your audience, and identify your primary dialect and region

Like any good localization strategy, you need to know your target audience, its culture, its language, and the things your target market values. You’ll need to consider how your brand voice and whether this will resonate with a Chinese audience. Can you directly translate your brand content, or will you need to consider a more creative translation, a transcreation, to convey your brand voice? As China is diverse, with differences across the regions, high-quality translation services can help you achieve your marketing strategy.  An experienced translation agency can help you avoid cultural mishaps and translation errors.

Learn from past successes and failures 

Learn from the companies who have attempted and accessed the market already. Localizing in China is challenging, and even some of the biggest names have failed after not performing thorough market research. Learning from what has worked with brands that are similar to yours can help narrow your research and expedite your localization strategy.

Related: The Top 10 Translation Blunders in Advertising 

Use local social media and eCommerce platforms

Mainland China uses various social media and eCommerce platforms that are not used or are less popular in other countries. Baidu is the search engine used by most people, with platforms such as WeChat for social media and eCommerce payments. Other social media platforms include Qzone, Renren and P1. In Hong Kong, western social media platforms are popular, and a variety of eCommerce platforms, from the Octopus card to PayMe, are used to pay for products online. 

Use expert multilingual translation services

It should be apparent by now the importance of localization and translation services when expanding your business globally, especially into Chinese markets. Navigating any new market is challenging, so take the guesswork out of your localization strategy and get the assistance of translation and localization experts. 

Into23 is a translation agency in Hong Kong offering localization and translation services. We are experts in Asian languages. Reach out to Into23 today to discuss your business localization strategy to set yourself up for success in the Chinese markets.

Beyond Google: Why Localized Translation is Useful

How accurate is Google Translate?

Even machine translation software like Google still has languages that defy translation.

In April 2006 Google launched a service that quickly became every internet user’s go-to for quick language translations. Google now boasts that it can translate 108 languages covering 99% of the internet population.

Yet in a world with over 7000 languages why aren’t more being included?

Many languages defy machine translation software, even though they are spoken by millions of people such as Bhojpuri (52 million), Fula or Fulani (65 million), Quechua (8 million), or African languages such as Luganda, Twi, and Ewe. So why is it that languages like Czech or Swedish, who have relatively smaller or similar numbers to these other languages, get translation support while the others are barely recognised?

Machine translation, like Google Translate, rely heavily on algorithms that are learned from human translations that require millions of words of translated text called parallel corpus. For translation machines to be effective they require a staggering number of parallel corpora for each language. An ideal parallel corpus will have content from a variety of contexts such as novels, news reports, and other pieces of writing that make up a language.

Digging Deeper

For languages like Czech or Swedish, as they are part of the European Union, a large part of their parallel corpus comes from official parliament documents. These countries are also important for big tech companies in terms of eCommerce marketing, language translation services and more, meaning that they have a larger parallel corpus to work with. With other languages, a large basis of their parallel corpus has come from the bible, which resulted in some entertaining doomsday prophecies from Google Translate prior to 2016.

In 2016, Google started using a new technique called neural machine translation which claims to have reduced translation errors by 60%. Neural machine translation is a type of artificial intelligence that can mimic some forms of human thinking. Sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, right? The neural machine translator can associate meaning to certain words and phrases. It can look at a sentence as a whole rather than translating each word. However, the database required to make this neural machine translation effective is still substantial.

Neural machine translation has been effective for select languages but what about the thousands of others?

What about the Others?

When West Africa was hit with Ebola or when Haiti was hit with an earthquake in 2010 difficulties occurred when those that were there to help could not communicate with the locals to get them the resources they needed. With little translation support for the languages spoken in these areas, it shed light on the need for diversifying machine language translations.

With COVID-19, health information has been needed in many languages which machine translation has been incapable of helping due to poor translation quality.

Further, for countries that have low literacy rates or no written language, locals may not even be literate in their mother tongue, using voice messages to communicate which increases the need for audio translation.

So, while expanding on neural machine translation is revolutionary in terms of very basic internet communication and translations it lags in terms of international need and diversity, especially in times of crisis. So what about for business?

Is Google Translate effective enough for business?

Google Translate is a convenient tool so it would be a stretch to say never to use it as it usually gets the basic understanding of a text, however, it is far from ideal in getting a quality translation that would be needed for business. Especially if you are aiming to enter the global market, need website localization, eLearning translation services, or are bolstering your eCommerce platform.

Here is why Google translate is not effective enough to be used in business.

  • No Proofreading

    One of the appeals of Google Translate is the speed in which it produces translations, however, this comes at a cost as it doesn’t equate with a quality translation. When you use certified translation services you are guaranteed a properly formatted and grammatically correct quality translation. Further, Into23’s translation services offer 24/7 availability with a quick translation turnaround making them nearly as fast as Google.

  • No Accountability

    Google does not have to be accountable for any inaccuracies in its translations as it is a free service. Any user can also manually input their translations and at times malicious and incorrect translations are allowed through. What’s more unnerving is that Google isn’t even accountable to your security or privacy as it collects data on whatever content you place into its text box to translate. When you work with translation professionals, your confidentiality and privacy are ensured.

  • No Customisation

    The translations from Google Translate will not be catered to your specific business needs and you run the risk of having nonsensical or inaccurate translations. In today’s global market it is important to speak to clients and customers in their own language, such as with website localization, and if the first impression of your content is incorrect it sends the message to any prospective customers that you are not the right business for them.

  • Legal Concerns

    Misinterpretations in formal and legal documents have the potential for serious safety or financial concerns which can lead to legal disputes. In a study performed on the terms and conditions of airlines, it detailed the risks of machine translations for legal documentation and its possible negative outcomes.

Businesses Need Certified Translation Services

No matter what type of business you run if you need to translate in any language, using multilingual translation services is crucial for business success. From transcreation for marketing to eLearning or eCommerce translation services, Into23 offers high-quality translation services in any language. Into23 works on your time and your schedule with 24/7 accessibility and fast turnaround. Get a free translation services quote today by filling in the form below or uploading your files to our quick quote portal.

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