In recent years, many people have attempted to use online translators such as Google Translate to save time and money. However, using Google Translate for your professional business can have negative consequences. While machine translation has improved, it is not 100% accurate and causes inaccuracies.
How Accurate is Google Translate?
In a recent study, Google Translate had around85% percent accuracy. That may seem like a high percentage, but imagine if 15% of your work was translated incorrectly.
Google Translate uses an algorithm called Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) or “deep learning”. Google Translate breaks down given input into words or phrases. At that point, it compares those words or phrases to those in its database. Google Translate then uses the most frequently used translation, which can cause inaccuracies.
Translation quality varies based on the chosen language pair. Some of the most accurate translations are the Spanish-English language pair. But, even translations between these languages are not at the level for use by a business. Other languages have a lower level of accuracy. Some of these includeChinese, German, and Portuguese.
Importance of Accuracy for Legal or Conference Translations
Potential clients are likely to have a bad perception of the work quality of a business if there are translation inaccuracies. The bar is set even higher for translation accuracy when discussing legal translation work. Even more so than other fields, it is important that legal work and translations contain no mistakes.
Using Google Translate for aconference translationalso poses a problem. Since conference translations are done in real-time from one language to another, if a translation is inaccurate, it can change the entire course of the meeting. It is also likely to give a negative perception of a company’s work quality.
Disadvantages of Google Translate
One disadvantage of Google Translate is that it does not pick up well on cultural context. There is no ability to add context to translations on Google Translate. This means the meaning is often lost in translation, such as sarcasm, jokes, and tone.
Additionally, there are commonly grammatical errors in texts. Google Translate cannot adhere precisely to grammar rules due to its algorithm. It chooses to use the most common translation in its database.
It’s Not All Bad
There are benefits to using Google Translate in some contexts. For example, using it for quick, short translations or trying to get the main idea of a text to assist in communication. However, a business should not use this program if the accuracy of its content is important.
In conclusion, the accuracy of translations is critical to business success. It is dangerous to leave the perception and reputation of a company to Google Translate, especially if a company works withlegal translationor conference translation. The importance of using language translation services with human translators should not be underestimated when a business wants to send the correct message.For professional and reliable translation services, contact Atlas Language Services.
FAQs
The study found that Google Translate achieved an overall accuracy of 85%, with the highest accuracy observed for language pairs with abundant training data and high market demand, such as English-French and English-Spanish.
Is Google Translate 100% accurate? ›
Well, the short answer is this: Yes, Google Translate is very accurate for the most part. In some cases, it's 94%+ accurate! In fact, it's one of the top-rated translation tools when it comes to translation accuracy, though the exact accuracy will depend on the language pairs that you've chosen.
What translator is 100% accurate? ›
DeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator.
What is the world's most reliable translator? ›
DeepL Translate. Translate while you read and write with DeepL Translate, the world's most accurate translator.
Is Microsoft Translator more accurate than Google Translate? ›
So when comparing Microsoft Translator vs Google Translate, its accuracy largely depends on the context of the content and the client's needs. Microsoft Bing Translator excels in formal and professional translations, benefiting from its integration with Microsoft's Azure services and its focus on major world languages.
Is there anything more accurate than Google Translate? ›
DeepL. DeepL is one of the best Google Translate alternatives for people who really value accuracy, especially when it comes to grasping context and local idioms.
How often is Google Translate correct? ›
Since its inception in 2006, it has become one of the top-rated machine translation (MT) tools, currently supporting 133 languages, having added 24 in 2022. Accuracy varies depending on language pair and content type, though some reports show Google Translate reaching 94% accuracy.
Is DeepL really better than Google Translate? ›
Is DeepL better than Google Translate? It depends on what you need. For the languages that it supports, DeepL is regarded to be a bit more accurate than Google Translate. However, DeepL Translate has a limited language selection as compared to Google Translate and also costs more money.
Does Google Translate work perfectly? ›
Google Translate uses machine learning algorithms and neural networks to generate translations, and its performance has improved over the years. However, it may still struggle with idiomatic expressions, context-specific nuances, and languages with complex grammatical structures.
What is the most inaccurate language on Google Translate? ›
At the same time, translations of Bengali, Haitian Creole, and Tajik failed 100% of the time. In addition, languages at which Google Translate failed 80% or more of the time were Kurdish, Nepali, Latin, Malaysian, Urdu, Maori, Cebuano, Georgian, Persian, Punjabi, and Uzbek.
If you value translation accuracy, DeepL is one of the best machine translation services that you'll find, even beating out other popular services like Google Translate.
What's the best translator to use? ›
The 11 Best Machine (AI) Translation Tools in 2023
- Google Translate.
- Bing Microsoft Translator.
- DeepL.
- Reverso Translation.
ChatGPT topped them all, expertly converting colloquialisms in the examples like "blow off steam," whereas Google Translate tended to provide more literal translations that fell flat across cultures. The table below contains our participants' ranking for each service.
How reliable is Google Translate? ›
Google Translate accuracy overview
| Accuracy levels of Google Translate for different target languages from English source content |
|---|
| Spanish | 94% accurate |
| Korean | 82.5% accurate |
| Mandarin Chinese | 81.7% accurate |
| Farsi | 67.5% accurate |
1 more rowNov 8, 2023
Pros
- Google Translate is fast. ...
- Google Translate is free. ...
- Google Translate is convenient. ...
- It's not ideal for confidential documents. ...
- Google Translate cannot provide a perfectly accurate translation. ...
- There is no proofreading. ...
- It requires Internet connection to use Google Translate.
Amazon Translate , it's apparent they both use machine translation technology. According to various comparisons, Google Translate is slightly more accurate but the difference is almost negligible. However, there are no professional translators involved in the translation process at all.
Is Google Translate 100 right in 2024? ›
The overall accuracy is 82.5 percent. Google Translate accuracy varies greatly across the supported language pairs. For instance, Google Translate is 90 percent accurate for the commonly used English-Spanish language pair and only 55 percent for the less frequently used English-Aremenian pair.
How is Google Translate so accurate? ›
Google Translate uses neural networks to translate content. These networks are made up of many layers and make connections between words, much like a human brain, to deliver more accurate translations.
Is DeepL 100 accurate? ›
Neural machine translation systems such as DeepL open up a whole world of possibilities. As one of the leading NMT technology vendors, DeepL can be: Fairly accurate: It can understand the broader context of words and phrases to produce more accurate and fluent translations and improve over time.
