When you envisioned your startup, did you see it going international? Do you want it to become a popular company with offices all over the world?
Many startups have the potential to grow globally while starting out small. That potential is like a seed that is part of the startup’s identity.
Of course, not all startups succeed, and not all of those that attain a certain level of success will be able to expand globally. There are many hurdles to global expansion but one of the main ones is language. This article will look at how machine translation can help you to overcome that roadblock and what the other benefits it can deliver are.
Machine Translation 101
In simple terms, machine translation is the process of translation using computer software without any human intervention. The use of computers for translation actually has a long history. The translation was one of the applications that were explored with early computers. However, it was only recently that computers became powerful enough to handle translation.
Machine Translation Defined
For translation to be classified as machine translation, there has to be zero human intervention. Most people today have experienced using machine translation on some level when they use online translators.
Types of Machine Translation
There are several types of machine translation that are currently being used today. The three most commonly used ones are:
- Rule-Based Machine Translation is the earliest form of machine translation. It relies on grammatical rules and other language-based rules that are programmed into the computer.
- Statistical Machine Translation utilizes statistical models of the relationship of words in a sentence. This is more sophisticated than relying on programmed rules but it is still lacking in some aspects.
- Neural Machine Translation is the most modern and the most accurate form of machine translation. Neural machine translation is basically AI learning languages and doing the translation. Because it learns the language, the more it translates, the better it becomes.
Although Neural Machine Translation is more expensive initially, its accuracy and its speed will more than offset the costs. That’s why it’s not surprising that many companies are making the switch to NMT today.
How Machine Translation Can Help Your Startup
How is all of this relevant to your startup business? Integrating machine translation into the operation of a startup can bring several benefits. Let’s go through some of those.
Make Your Company More Efficient
For a startup that is starting to operate in other countries, translation is necessary. Most of the time, these translations must be done quickly. Sending off to third-party translators will take time and then the accuracy might not be very good.
By using machine translation, you can get the translation that you need in minutes instead of having to wait for hours, or even days if you’re unlucky enough to hire the wrong translator.
Startups need to take advantage of opportunities immediately and machine translation will help you achieve that.
Cost Reduction
There are several ways you can get the translation you need for your company. The first is to hire a translator who will work for your startup as a full-time employee. However, this can be expensive as you might need a separate translator for each language.
Then you can outsource the translation to a company or to a freelancer. These options can also be costly and in the case of working with a freelancer, you cannot guarantee the quality. Finally, you can resort to machine translation, and compared to the other options it is much cheaper.
Consistency and Accuracy Guaranteed
When you work with different freelance translators, you will have content that has no consistency in the voice and tone. That’s because human translators will always leave their own style in the translation.
Machine translation on the other hand will provide a more consistent style and tone across the different tasks. That’s because the principles used in the MT are the same, and the output will have the same kind of style. Although with NMT there could be some changes after some time since the system is designed to learn and adapt.
The accuracy of machine translation is also something continuously improving. However, those who are still not convinced about the accuracy of machine translation services, they can choose to use Machine Translation Post Editing (MTPE). In an MTPE setup, MT will handle the actual translation but a human editor will go through the final output to ensure that it is accurate.
Secure Data
Security is a very big concern right now. The documents of your startup can be the target of some unscrupulous individuals if you are not careful. Sending your documents to translation companies and to freelancers could leave your documents exposed and your company’s secrets can be stolen that way.
When you use machine translation there will be less chance that your documents and information can end up in the wrong hands.
Machine translation can do wonders for your startup if you are looking to expand into other markets and if you want to find investors. For many businesses, it’s actually a necessity now.
