Have you ever requested or required the services of a professional translator and they delivered you something you weren’t expecting? Many people tend to be very careful when hiring an agency or a professional translator, for the fear of getting a bad result or experience… although sometimes they ignore this and do it just to save some money. And we understand. Everyone wants something accessible.

But when you hire an agency or professional translator, he/she needs to “honor” the title and be professional. For the translation to be designated as high-quality, it must follow a series of review and correction protocols before its delivering. And just because is a high-quality translation, doesn’t mean it needs to be expensive. You need to consider your options before hiring someone and trust him/her your job. Before going through those options, you can read this article about the qualities of a good translator so you can choose the best one!

Moreover, when someone hasn’t much money but requires a translation service, they tend to make the mistake of using the Internet to translate it.

It should be emphasized that we aren’t against the machine translations, and much less the idea of some sites using the Google Translator to translate their web pages in different languages. Although it’s not the best option, you can consider it when having low budget and hiring a professional after raising enough money. But what’s unacceptable is someone collecting for a profesional translation and delivering a machine translation. This affects not just the person that requires the service but the professionals working in the field.

In this article, we’ll share with you some tips that will help you to know if your translation is high-quality or not.

SIGNS TO RECOGNIZE A MACHINE TRANSLATION

These are some signs that will help you know if your text was treated with profesionalism or not.

1. Literal translations: When the translator doesn’t recognize the context or sense of a phrase, he/she opt for a literal translation. On occasion, this tends to spark off controversy or laughs because of the nonsenses they may come to mean. Such was the case of the “men’s restroom” that was translated as “knights room“… What a medieval restrooms!
2. Lack of cultural context: A newbie doesn’t investigate like a professional translator, so some parts of the text could loss its sense or its objective.
3. Nonsense text: The text tends to disrespect the source format due to the well-known copy and paste.
4. Details of the translation: The machine translator doesn’t usually request the client’s information like the language or variant to which it will be translated. There are phrases that are unique in its language, and the translator needs to investigate to adapt them into the target language.

You can also read some tips to review your translation and make a thorough review of your final job.

You don’t need to know the source language perfectly to recognize machine translations, you just need to identify those details in the text you requested. Don’t to be fooled with low-quality texts!