Is poor machine translation putting customers off your business?

We’ve all had a good giggle from time to time thanks to the inadequacies and inaccuracies of machine translation. Clumsy phrases and sentences that are simply bizzare due to mid-translated idioms are all too common with phrase-based statistical machine translation. 

Despite this, many companies still fall into the trap of relying on machine translation in order to cut costs. Yes, machine translation is cheaper than using professional human translation services. That’s why so many businesses take a chance on using it, as they try to balance the books. However, when it comes to professional translation services, you get what you pay for.

However, machine translation may also be something of a false economy. It can certainly cut down on the cost of human translation services (albeit for a poorer quality end product), but there may be hidden costs to using machine translation services. Many customers will judge a company based on the quality of the information that it presents about itself. As such, a business with a poorly worded website or mis-spelled advertisements could inadvertently be putting customers off. And in our hugely competitive global environment, there are plenty of other companies waiting around to snap up those customers. 

It’s almost impossible to measure how many customers a company loses due to presenting itself in a poor light. According to Fortune, “trust is the most powerful currency in business.” As such, if a company doesn’t inspire trust, it will not fare as well as one that does – and if customers can’t even trust that company to spell things correctly on its website, why should they trust it with their hard-earned money?

In short, machine translation can produce mistakes that put customers off interacting with a business. That costs the company money. Therefore, a small amount of expenditure on professional human translation services can save that business money in the long run. Something to think about next time your company needs a translation! 

For further information on the advantages of using a reliable, accurate human translation service, contact Tomedes.