Content Translation: Human vs. Online
You’re on your way to having a multi-lingual site, the functionality is all there, and you just need your content.
Whether your content is being translated into Chinese, Arabic or French you need to make sure – are you sending the right message?
Translation services can be expensive; however going down a ‘cheap and nasty’ route of an online translator can be even more costly to your business and its reputation.
Using an online translator (such as Babelfish or Google Translate) might be a fast, easy (and free) way to get the gist of a small section of text, but for copy which will be geared toward selling your businesses services or products it is crucial that you employ the skills of a real person (fluent, and if possible, native to the language) to do this for you.
Roughly translating copy using an online method will see that you definitely miss out on re-structuring your content to be culturally specific, culturally sensitive, as well as differences in sentence structure, grammar, expression or even the meaning of basic words.
Elance translator Dynise Basore discussed this recently, with a great example:
(Sample sales copy for a non-existent fitness product with only one idiomatic expression)
Why spend the money for human translation over using a translation tool?
“Vuoi avere un bel fisico? Scolpito e senza grassi? Per avere un fisico da spiaggia avete bisogno di Superfit!! Con Superfit e un programma di esercizi sarete pronti per la spiaggia o la piscina!!! Andiamo al mare per trovare le gnocche!!”
Babelfish Translation:
“You want to have a beautiful physicist? Carved and without fat people? For having a physicist from beach you need Superfit! With Superfit and a program of exercises you will be ready for the beach or the swimming pool! We go to the sea in order to find the gnocche”
Google Translate Translation:
"You have a nice body? Sculpted and fat-free? To get a physical from the beach you need Superfit! Superfit with an exercise program and you're ready for the beach or the pool! We go to sea to find the gnocche!"
Human Translation:
"Do you want to have a great body? Sculpted and fat-free? To get a beach-ready body you need Superfit!! With Superfit and an exercise program you will be ready for the beach or the pool!! Let’s go to the beach to find hot girls!!"
It really doesn’t get any clearer than that.
There are many ways you can reduce budget on a web project, but do your business (and most importantly your customers) a favour, and make the investment to get your content translated by a pro.
This content could very well be the thing that wins you your next customer who may otherwise have gone to a competitor who made the effort to target them.
