BURG Translations Blog
Six e-learning trends for 2021 and beyond
It’s been called the future of learning and education, and with the pandemic e-learning has become more important than ever. Even before COVID-19, the e-learning market was estimated to grow to $315 billion by 2025. With nearly all education and training courses now taking place remotely, it’s almost certain that this figure will peak sooner than predicted.
Google Translate continues to improve, but how accurate is it?
As the quality of Google Translate continues to improve, one has to ask – is it accurate enough to take on all of my translation needs in 2021? The short answer to this question is… absolutely not! While it made some impressive strides in 2020, there’s no guarantee that at a click of the mouse you’ll always receive a perfect translation. To illustrate, let’s assume that a company uses the slogan ‘On time delivery, or you don’t pay’. Using Google Translate, the Spanish translation is ‘Delivery on time, or you don’t pay’ and the German translation is ‘On time delivery, or you won’t pay’. A little variance between the translations, but they definitely get the point across. What happens if the tagline needs to be translated into a low-resource language like Zulu? When we entered the tagline into Google Translate, it returned – ‘At the time of delivery, or no payment’. You have to admit, the translation is a bit confusing and somewhat nonsensical.
Does machine translation have a role in the language translation industry?
Machine translation dates back as early as the 17th-century and has gone through many iterations. However it wasn’t until the late 1980’s, when computer power began to increase and costs began to decrease, that the foundation for our current online machine translation technology was born. Today, the digital generation has the luxury of entering a word or phrase on Google Translate, and the translation appears nearly instantaneously. But, is the translation always accurate? For those who have used Google Translate, you know that it is prone to errors – making translation verification a must.
What you need to know about the language translation process
After doing research and comparisons, you’ve made your selection and have partnered with a language service provider (LSP). Your first multi-language translation project is underway. And as you eagerly await for the finished product, you can’t help but wonder what happens between the time you hand over your documents to the LSP and when the documents are returned to you for review? By understanding the translation workflow, you’ll be in a better position to manage internal expectations and stay involved in the process.
Depending on your needs, you have translation options
As a Language Service Provider (LSP), we’ve heard our fair share of machine translations (MT) horror stories and tales of when a trusted colleague left a few too many errors in the deliverable. Either of these scenarios raises the question of the translation accuracy as a whole. Does this mean that machine translations and enlisting assistance from a colleague should be avoided at all costs? On the contrary, there is a time and place for MT or for asking a trusted colleague for help. But, you need to know when to use these resources and for which projects.
