Free JP Translation Guide

– Free translation is well...free - the cost is right, but can you live with the quality? –
By Saeculii Professional Translation Services

Many translation companies and agencies offer machine translation (MT) as free online translations, free language translation, and simply free translation. The Babel Fish Translation service by Altavista is powered by Systran (maker of machine translation software).

Select a short sentence – 2 at the most – and run it through the Babel Fish Translation:

  • Paste your source text into the input box labeled Translate a block of text.
  • Select "English to Japanese" from the dropdown box labeled Select from and to languages.
  • Click the button labeled Translate.

You have a free translation! But is this right for your translation project? Complete the exercise to find out:

  • Select and copy the translated Japanese text from the top input box.
  • Paste the translated text into the input box labeled Translate again.
  • This time, select "Japanese to English" from the dropdown box labeled Select from and to languages.
  • Click the button labeled Translate.

The free translation appears in the top input box.

Accuracy estimates vary greatly depending on who is researching (30%) and who is selling (98%) machine translation (MT) software. Our research indicates 70% is a fair assessment for machine translation (MT) accuracy. From a professional perspective of 11 years of experience, machine translation is efficient in looking up dictionary terms (meaning of words). In most cases, I find it is much more productive to simply do the translation myself.

As was noted in the Wall Street Journal in 2002 "I definitely would not use machine translation (MT) for business or anything remotely requiring accuracy."

Translation by its very nature represents everything that is human - thought! Translation is a human activity that requires enormous language skills and subject matter knowledge with years of experience. Machine translation which is offered as free online translations, free language translation, or simply free translation, is most effective in the following situations:

  • Fields with highly limited ranges of vocabulary and very simple sentence structures.
  • For "gisting" or, to get the general meaning (gist) of a document.

See Online Translations Terminology (opens in new browser window)

Machine translation is useful for translation projects that have all the following project requirements:

  • Internal consumption.
  • Limited budget.
  • Short turn-around.
  • Quality is not important.

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