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Is It Possible For Machine Translation To Replace Creative Translation?

Elite AsiaBusiness LocalisationIs It Possible For Machine Translation To Replace Creative Translation?

In today’s increasingly digital world, advancements in technology have led to cutting-edge developments in the world of translation. Neural Machine Translation is one option that is rapidly becoming more popular when it comes to translating documents due to its relatively lower cost, its faster speed, and its capacity to translate documents into several languages simultaneously.

However, is machine translation really a better option than creative translation carried out by a human being?

Machine Translation Brings Benefits To Certain Industries

It’s fair to say that Neural Machine Translation tools like Google Translate Neural Machine Translation such as Google Translate certainly have their place in today’s modern world. This Google product has long been learning how to produce natural translations, and sometimes when you search for specific sentences, they have already received verification from Google Translate contributors, thus ensuring that the translation is a commonly accepted one.

With this in mind, machine translation tools are a good choice for general translation purposes such as customer support for e-commerce websites, or for repetitive words found in technical books. There are, however, some significant drawbacks to relying too heavily on machine translation for most other translation purposes.

When it comes to scientific or legal materials, for example, the technical nature of the language required will usually require Machine Translation Post Editing. While machine translations can carry out pages of these translations instantly, it benefits from human translators to go through the translation produced by these advanced tools and proofread and edit the text, checking to ensure the sentences make sense in context.

When Is Creative Translation The Best Choice?

If you need to create marketing materials, or any other documents that require the translation to take a salesy or persuasive tone, using solely machine translation tools are not recommended. Creative translation or usually called Transcreation, represents the best choice for the following purposes:

  • For creating marketing and advertising materials.
  • For branding purposes.
  • For creating websites.
  • For writing press releases.
  • For generating tag lines and slogans.
  • For translating marketing-related publishing materials.

Transcreation is essential for marketing materials because it helps to convey an identical message to the original text in the target language. Only a creative human translator can truly grab the audience’s attention, engage them with the brand’s message, and persuade them to make the right purchasing decision.

Why is a machine translation tool not the right choice for such purposes?

The answer lies in the fact that, as yet, no machine learning tool has been able to create translated text that really resonates with the reader in a natural way that would encourage them to convert to being a paying customer. Only humans can provide a translation that seamlessly conveys the company’s branding, identity, and marketing strategies in such a way that corresponds with the target country’s language quirks and culture. A native human translator will naturally avoid any taboo traditions or inappropriate words in their translation and will be able to take the most suitable approach to speak naturally to a native reader in their home country.

Although creative translation should never be replaced by Machine Translation in every case, Elite Asia can provide you with both creative human translation services and/or machine translation post-editing services to meet your requirements.

We can help you to determine which approach is the best one for your unique translation needs, and thanks to the help of our expert translation team, we can help you to approach your new market in the best possible way.

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