Don’t Be Fooled – A Machine Can’t Perform an Accurate Translation

One of my French college English students once turned in a paper to me that showed all the signs of having been “written” by a machine translator. Even while trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, the proof came at the end of his resume, in the leisure section: one of his free-time activities was listed as “tennis shoe, practiced for 5 years.”

The French word for “basketball” is “le basket,” and certainly every French basketball player knows that the term comes from English. But “un basket” is also a tennis shoe – and my student was trapped.

In today’s era of rapidly expanding modern technology, we all have access to translation programs online. But remember that they remain tools; like dictionaries, they can help you understand the general gist of a text, or give you different possible translations for a word. However, in the forseeable future, machines will not be able to do the job of a qualified human translator, because they cannot understand the complex cultural and linguistic nuances present in all languages.

That’s why it’s essential to turn to a professional language service company for your translation, interpretation and localization needs. Language Translation Inc. in San Diego is ready to help your business reach out to foreign clients through quality document translation. “We speak your language…and theirs.”

Betty Carlson