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Why pay for translation?
There are a many reasons why you should choose to pay for translation....
We have all seen bad translations in restaurants or shops. Some are amusing, while others are potentially embarrassing for the owner. Many cannot be understood at all. Some highlight cultural differences or use slang words incorrectly. In a few cases the end result could be seen as quite offensive. In business this can mean the difference between winning and losing a contract or missing a vital clause in a legal document.
Free Online Translation
Online translation can be used for 'quick and dirty' translations. However, they tend to translate word for word and often miss the meaning of a sentence. Sentences that are translated literally will contain meaningless phrases; consider this; 'We should complete on time but don't hold your breath!' - "Hold your breath" is a colloquial phrase and, if you think about it for a moment, conjures up images of someone trying to grab the air in front of their mouth or breathing into their hands. There are thousands of these everyday phrases that don't really have the same meaning as the actual words. When translated online the meaning is lost. This often happens with informal communications as we tend to write in the same way that we speak. In formal communications the problem is that there are often long and complex sentences. There is a danger of these sentences becoming gibberish. Most languages have the same problem. Online translation also have problems with gender and grammar.
An example....
We took a sentence and translated into several languages using a well known and respected online translation service. We then took the text produced and asked for that text to be translated into English...
From English; "It is imperative that the contractor keeps to the deadline and stays within budget."; then into Italian "È di importanza fondamentale che l'appaltatore si attenga alla scadenza e rimanga all'interno del preventivo."; and then back again "It is of fundamental importance that l' contractor adheres itself upon maturity and remains all' inside of the estimate."
The best/worst translation has to be English-Korean-English. This translates back to "Contractor close timely defending budget is urgent stays". Online translation is improving... a year ago this phrase translated to "The contractor defends and the boundary line that it stays in draft budget, it is urgent".
The question that needs to be asked is 'at what point did the sentence lose its meaning?'
The problem with online translation is that the meaning is often lost. or should I say... About on-line translation problem meaning is lossed at any time. or at least that is what babelfish told me....
121Translation will help you to produce the perfect translation at a very reasonable price. 121Translation will help you to produce the perfect transfer on the very moderate price.
At first glance the last example seems fairly good until you notice that the word translation has changed to transfer. The Russian word for translation is перевод - which should easily translate back into English as translation, but the online translator gets it wrong.
Professional translation is the only answer....
Finally, there are numerous words in the English language that have more than one meaning. In context their meaning is obvious to English speakers, but not to a computer. "We had a fantastic time on our trip" "The crack in the pavement made me trip"
The following list of words have also been suggested as words with more than one meaning, it is likely that there will be two different words in most other languages.
bank, bear, class, console, creep, crop, divide, dry, fall, fit, fritter, general, gin, hedge, keel, left, live, needle, page, pants, peer, permit, read, riddle, scrape, shine, sink, ship, slide, slip, tear, throw, train, trip, wind.
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