How Human Translation Is Better Than Machine Translation

Posted By Singapore Translators | Publised At 30/08/2019
Last Modified: 17th Nov 2023

Whenever you have thought of having the best translation services in Singapore, you must have struggled to make a firm decision. This is to decide whether you choose a human translator or a machine translator. With the growth of technology, you must have also thought that it is better to adjust with machine translation since one day the machines will replace humans in the future.

How Human Translation Is Better Than Machine Translation

There have been constant discussions about will the machines replace humans in the translation industry. Translators and clients around the world have also been thinking that if machine translation is good or bad.

Now every day when we are depended heavily upon machines and gadgets to lead our lives comfortable, we are still a step away from machine translation when it comes to translating your documents.

What Is The Outcome Of Machine Translation?

When you are opting to translate your documents via machines, then the translation is done only on the basis of words. It means changing or substituting words from one language to another. In a machine-based document translation, there is no human intervention.

If you want to know what is the outcome of using machine translation, then it is better you ask those people who have used Google Translate for translating a particular text. You will come to know that the result will not be pleasing.

It is true that MNC giants like Google and IBM are spending millions to develop and create software that can do machine translation. Most of the new age translation companies also prefer to have machines that can do automatic translation with speed.

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Machine translation works out perfectly well if you want cheap translation within a very less period of time. Moreover, machine translation is best used for simple document translation where you are not required to follow any guidelines or any kind of certificate translation.

You will not be surprised that you are getting a translation service which is cheap and is done within a less time period. It will certainly look attractive in your eyes. But what you don’t know is that machine translation also has risks that will hamper the document quality.

Why You Should Not Go With Machine Translation?

Language experts have revealed various reasons for not going with machine translation to translate a document from one language to another language. There are many risks in taking machine translation for translating documents. You should never go with machine translation due to the following reasons, which are:

  • There are various types of translation software developing each day, but none of them could match the level of human language.
  • A machine goes with just word to word translation into one language to another. In human language, a single word has numerous meanings. Moreover, only the background type will determine the actual and appropriate meaning of that particular word. For example, if the sentence says – “You may be going right in your thought”. If the machine translates the word “right” then it can be the word which means the direction. The word right has a different meaning. It can be “right” which means accurate or it can also be the direction. Just remember that machines go with a word to word translation it can be confusing with those words which have the same spelling but different meanings.

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  • Machine translation will never go deep in the context while translating a document. Machines will ignore tone, idioms, and other linguistic touches.
  • Machine translation will not understand the whole document and is very likely to make errors. If you want to translate your documents for immigration purposes, then it is best to avoid going for machine translation. Machine translation will not be accurate and most likely your immigration document will get cancelled by the foreign immigration officials. In Singapore, only Hire Sworn Translators Singapore are certified with the authority to translate and certify official documents.

What is The Difference between Human Translation and Machine Translation?

The differences between human translation and machine translation are as follows:

  • Machine translation cannot pick up or detect errors, stylistic tone, cultural references or any kind of creative peculiarity. On the other hand, if you go for human translation these aspects will be clearly detected and fixed. Moreover, the document will be translated perfectly in such a manner that fits the tone and style of the document.
  • A machine translator can translate the same document twice or more than that. But the human translator will never translate the same document twice. It will save the precious time of the translator. A human translator saves whatever translation work they have done in the memory. It is done so that the same document is not repeated again. But in the case of machine translation, the translated document is not saved in memory.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Machine Translation

Machine translation might give quick results and it’s affordable as well. But there are always some pros and cons of certain things, so let’s discuss them one by one.

Advantages of machine translation

  1. Rapid translation– machine translation gives rapid results, and it might be easier to translate complicated texts.
  2. Affordable rates- The price of machine translation is negligible compared to the cost of human translation. A human translator will charge $0.01-0.02/word for his or her services, whereas it takes anywhere from 0.05-4 seconds to generate a machine translation.

Disadvantages of machine translation

  1. Precision– Precision is what we cannot compromise, machine-translated documents somehow are not accurate.
  2. Limited usage– machine translation cannot be able to translate different file formats. TXT, Doc etc. If someone wants to translate a medical report then he must have to submit JPEG or PDF file.
  3. Damaging brand image-  Machine translation can damage brand image due to a lack of culturally awareness and cohesiveness.
  4. Difficult to predict grammatical errors

When to use Human Translator and When to Use Machine translator

We cannot say that we should totally boycott machine translations, machine translation also has some sort of benefits and it’s really easy to use.

Selecting Machine Translator

  • When you have a large amount of data to translate and for that, only a general meaning is enough.
  • Machine translation is a great option when you don’t have the time to lookup an answer from a trusted website.
  • Better to use a machine translator when there is no requirement of nuance and cultural understanding.

Selecting Human Translator

  • Where accuracy is essential
  • When the translated document is received by end-users.
  • Where there is a need for understanding and decision making
  • When you need better quality content

5 Reasons Why Machine Translators Will Never Replace Human Translators

Translation is the most effective means of connecting and communicating between various countries, business organizations, customers and companies. The most common way of getting translation services is to get the help of a professional translator from a reputed translation agency.

In Singapore, you will get a professional and certified language translator to translate your documents from one language to another language exclusively at singaporetranslation.com. Here, you will even get Korean Translators to translate your native language document into the Korean language.

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On the other hand, machine translation tools such as Google translate are just good enough to help a student with learning a foreign language online. Machines translators can never be able to replace human translators due to the 5 reasons which are:

  1. Machines are not able to understand the culture and language of the world. It only does word to word translation. Unlike human translators, machine translators are not able to understand a specific culture, slangs, idioms, and same meaning words.
  2. , Unlike humans, machines are not able to differentiate between the same spelling words and their contexts.
  3. Machines cannot translate various dialects and local languages. But humans can do it perfectly.
  4. Machines cannot translate the documents as per various styles and tones.
  5. Machine translators cannot offer services like editing, proofreading, revising, etc. But a human translator can do it perfectly and flawless.

Conclusion

Now, that you have known what is the difference between availing human translation and machine translation. On the basis of the above discussion, it is now revealed that human translation is the most reliable one and machines can never be better enough than humans.

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Therefore, if you have any kind of translation needs then you can contact our experienced human translators at singaporetranslation.com. Here, you can even get the help of Cambodian Translators Services Singapore who can translate your Cambodian document into any language for your choice.



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