Even if a company has a good product, a strong website, and a well-funded marketing campaign, it may still struggle in a foreign market because its message doesn’t sound appropriate.
The problem is growing as artificial intelligence enters the translation industry.
For many years businesses regarded translation as a fairly simple process—they would prepare the content, pass it on to a translator, review the outcome and then publish it. This way of working has been altered by AI. Nowadays, translation tools can handle thousands of words speedily, suggest terminology, compare different versions of a text, and help businesses manage their content in a number of languages.
That is a major change for companies that operate internationally, but it doesn’t mean that all translation problems can be dealt with simply by pushing a button.
Why Translation Becomes Complicated as a Business Grows
Suppose an online retailer is expanding from the UK to Spain, France, and the Middle East; it could end up having to translate thousands of product descriptions, customer emails, advertising campaigns, checkout pages, policies, and help articles.
Carrying out all this work by hand can take up a lot of time and may lead to consistency problems if different translators use different terms for the same product or concept.
AI is useful in this situation since it is able to handle large-scale repetitive tasks; it can assist in identifying commonly used terminology, in producing the first drafts of the content, and in pointing out inconsistencies that would otherwise take a lot of time to spot.
It doesn’t mean that the human translator is therefore any less important; in many cases it just alters the areas where their time is spent.
A Translation Can Be Grammatically Correct and Still Be Wrong
One of the main drawbacks of placing too much trust in automated translation is this.
Although words have meanings it is the context that decides how these meanings are understood.
What may be an acceptable marketing phrase in one country could sound awkward in another, a technical term may have a particular accepted translation within a specific industry, and a legal sentence can become ambiguous if its wording is altered without taking into account the legal system in which it will be used.
There is as well the question of tone; for example, a financial company might wish its communications to come across as formal and authoritative, while an e-commerce brand would rather have a more conversational tone.
AI can recognise patterns in language, but deciding whether a particular phrase is appropriate for a specific audience still requires judgement.
Where Human Translators Fit In
For many businesses the best practical option is not to have to decide between using AI or human translation.
The correct way is to use both.
An AI could look after some of the work that takes up time without necessarily needing creative judgement. This would allow professional linguists to focus on accuracy, tone, terminology, cultural adaptation, and the various details that decide whether or not a piece of content is suitable for its target audience.
Businesses that invest in professional Translation Services can thus make use of a workflow in which technology boosts efficiency and experienced linguists are in charge of the quality of the final output.
This applies especially to companies that have big websites or whose content is always changing. Since product information, blog posts, support pages, and marketing campaigns all need to be regularly updated, an efficient translation process has become increasingly important.
What AI Could Change Next
The technology is still in a state of development and is probably going to have a wider role.
Future translation systems might improve their ability to keep a company’s preferred terminology and writing style consistent across thousands of pages and could also become more closely integrated with content management systems, enabling translated material to pass through the publishing workflows with less need for manual intervention.
For international businesses the appeal is clear since faster multilingual production makes it easier to test new markets without having to commit immediately to the same amount of resources that would be needed for a full-scale expansion.
But However, there is a different aspect to this development. aThe greater ease with which automated translation can be obtained will mean that the distinction between a simple translation and true localisation will become more significant. Since it is now possible for anyone to produce a translated version of a website in just a matter of minutes, businesses will have to compete on the basis of how natural, relevant and trustworthy the content seems to local customers.e Human Element Is Not Disappearing
There’s a tendency to see AI as a technology which will either revolutionise translation or make translators unnecessary. The actual outcome is probably going to be less dramatic.
Translating requires making choices. For instance, which expression sounds natural? Is there a suitable term for use in this industry? Does the campaign convey the idea it is meant to in another culture? Should a sentence be translated literally or reworded entirely?
This involves more than just a matter of speed.
For global businesses the value of AI will eventually lie in providing language professionals with better tools rather than getting them out of the process; the technology can take on more of the repetitive work while people concentrate on the aspects of communication where experience and judgement are most important.
Conclusion
AI is already affecting the way that businesses deal with multilingual communication since it simplifies the management of large translation projects and provides companies with new methods of working with content on an international scale.
Successful communication between different countries is not merely a question of translating words from one language to another since context, culture, terminology, tone, and the expectations of the audience all play a role.
The companies which obtain the greatest benefits from AI are likely to be the ones who regard it as a component of a broader translation strategy rather than as a full substitute for professional expertise. So long as it is used correctly, the technology has the ability to speed up global communication without making it any less human.
