Human Translation has Better Flow
Human interpretation often has better flow compared to machine translation jobs. Machines only translate the words while humans get the concept of the message. This is important when considering localisation of the website. Visitors are turned off when the message is a literal translation instead of conveying the branding.
While there are times when machine translation is sufficient for the job, companies should employ a human to interpret business documents and website contents to have consistency with regards to the branding.
Human Translation is better in Marketing
Machine translation doesn’t work with marketing campaigns, which are often dynamic and creative. Companies spend millions to develop its branding and put the service or product in the best light possible. Machines lack creative thinking that will make translated marketing material duller than the original. It would be a waste of the company’s advertising money to have a machine interpret the marketing campaign.
It is best to get a human for translation jobs related to marketing campaigns. The human must have a marketing background in order to help translate the marketing efforts to another language without flattening it. That way, the brand identity, is kept even in other languages.
Human Translation is best for SEO
Machine translation doesn’t help in attracting visitors to a website. Keywords that are translated are not the terms that the local internet users are looking for. This is why there is a need for human interpretation for keywords, which are part of the website’s content and meta-data.
The web page must target the terms to optimise it for search engines. Machine translation jobs usually take the literal meaning of the terms. This means that the keywords end up translated and not researched according to the local market. This makes the content to be irrelevant to the keyword research.
Google and other search engines also assess the quality of websites and machine translations are sometimes poor in quality. Poor assessment could lead lower ranking in the results, which is something that is hard to recover from.
There are advantages and disadvantages of using machine translation. The only disadvantage of using a human for translation jobs is the expense. With a human, companies don’t need to recheck the translation them. It is easier to hire a translator with a marketing background who can also edit the content. Companies should keep in mind that customer service and quality is the most important thing.