In today’s globalized world, accessing translation services can be as easy as googling “translations” and taking your pick from the myriad of options appearing on your screen. You’ll find translation agencies and freelance translators all ready to undertake your translation project…for a price.

Some lower-end agencies charge a flat-rate per-word fee for a particular language. In some cases, you can even go to a website, enter the source and target languages and the number of words to be translated and be given an automatic quote. No consideration is given to the many underlying factors that determine whether a translation project is done to a professional standard or not…for these service providers, translating your document is simply a matter of languages and number of words. These agencies usually have lists of translators and mass-mail project offers to them, with no consideration given to expertise or experience. Quality is secondary to their goal of getting the job done as quickly as possible at the lowest price, period.

But in the business world, your website or printed documentation may be all that you have to give that great “first impression” that will grow your business. In the business world, a professional appearance and top-quality products can make or break a company. The best translation agencies understand that, and are ready to partner with you to show your clients – current or potential – how great your company is.

And it all starts with your words…translated into the language of your current and potential clients.

But just how are translation costs determined?

There are a number of factors that top-quality translation agencies (and translators) take into account when offering a quote for a translation project. The most important include:

Language pair. Logically, translations between common languages (such as English and Spanish, for example) cost less than translations between less-common languages (e.g., Swedish, Gaelic, Croatian) or between unusual language combinations (e.g., Spanish to Finnish) simply as a result of the law of supply and demand. If the target language is a specific language variant (Chilean Spanish, for example), your translation may cost more than if you request a general language variant (e.g., Latin American Spanish).

Agency or freelancer? A translation from a top-quality agency will generally cost more than a freelancer’s translation due to issues like business overhead, etc. However, choosing to go with an agency may be the right option for you if you need your text translated into a number of languages (for example, in the case of on-line businesses with a global target audience), as freelancers generally offer services in one or two languages only. Also, translation agencies have quality control processes that usually include at least one proofreading by another translator or a professional editor.

Subject matter and level of complexity. Here the rule is quite simple: the more difficult the subject matter is, the higher the translation rate. Top-quality translation agencies have a roster of translators who are highly experienced in specific fields; they may have received training in the topic in question, worked professionally in the field or have translated a large number of similar texts in the past. Rates for texts that are complex, highly specialized, technical or otherwise demanding are higher in order to compensate the increased level of expertise of the translator carrying out the project.

Turnaround times. Perhaps you’re in a rush and need your translation “yesterday”…or maybe you’re not and you’re happy with having it ready for you next week. Deadlines are another determining factor in translation pricing. Top-quality translation agencies have quality control processes that usually include at least one proofreading by another translator or a professional editor and – like anything else that is done well – this takes time. If you have a highly technical document, if the language combination is unusual, if your text requires DTP services, getting your document through the entire translation/quality control process becomes more complex, as does assembling the team that is going to carry out the project. Longer deadlines give agencies and translators more leeway in finding the most competent, yet cost-effective, providers of the services you need, and that means a lower cost for you.

Volume. The economy of scale does apply to translations. Handling one large translation project consumes less time and fewer resources than the same number of words spread among several projects. This means that the costs in human and material resources are lower for the agency or translator, and should mean a savings for you, too. This is also true for regular clients; once the agency or translator gets to know your particular needs (style, terminology, etc.), you may be able to negotiate a lower rate.

Document format. Simple formats (MSWord or plain text) take less preparation and handling than complex formats (documents converted from .pdf files, or documents with DTP characteristics such as brochures) as the latter cost more because it takes more time to process them.

Extra services. In today’s fast-paced world, it often makes sense to turn an entire project over to one service provider, and translating your document or website is no different. Top-quality agencies often offer one-stop shop complementary services so that you don’t have to seek out a DTP specialist or web page designer to get your project up and running. Of course, these services entail extra charges, but the savings in time, effort and stress may more than compensate the cost. When the team working on your project speaks the languages involved, you can rest assured that your web page or document will contain no language-based errors.

When you consider entrusting the translation of your document to a translation agency or freelance translator, remember that the text to be translated will be part of your company’s image and that it is far easier to create a good brand image than it is to fix a poor one. Put your company’s image into the hands of experienced professionals who will provide the expertise and outstanding quality you need to show your business in the very best light.

Google recently launched a Translate Community, inviting language-lover volunteers to help improve the accuracy of Google Translate services.

At first sight, this seems like a win-win situation, as long-suffering Google Translate users have often voiced their frustration with the quality of the translations rendered, while Google gets free knowledge (and labor) from a virtual community of volunteers who speak more than one language. (This is another issue: Google is a multinational corporation operating with billions of dollars annually; one would think that it could afford to pay professionals to do the job right!).

Is All that Glitters Gold?

Nevertheless, it might make sense to heed the old adage, “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is” because – as anyone who works in translation knows all too well – speaking is not translating, any more than walking is dancing.

Together with all the usual issues associated with crowdsourcing (susceptibility to malicious attacks, quality of work in general, reliability of contributors, problems with communication, and so on), there are drawbacks that are specific to collaborative translation/editing on a massive scale. This can be further complicated when editing a machine-generated translation, i.e., one that from the beginning lacks the human translation of its meaning. It seems rather like weekend DIYers building a skyscraper on a foundation of sand…

The Importance of Human Expertise

No matter how sophisticated, to date no machine translation system has been able to approach the professional translator’s sensitivity to language variant, context and register, essential elements in any good translation…and something that language-lovers volunteering their time and effort cannot be expected to contribute with their efforts, no matter how well-meaning or dedicated they may be.

The Pareto principle (aka the 80-20 rule) tells us that, for many events, about 80% of the effects are generated by about 20% of the causes. It remains to be seen if the Google Translate community will have enough knowledgeable volunteers who are active and expert enough to provide the accurate information needed to guarantee translation accuracy in sufficient volume, and how this will balance out with the contributions of those who are not.

A Bad Translation is Worse than No Translation at All

One of the most critical issues, however, might actually be one that is not commonly addressed: the illusion of reliability. Most translators have dealt with clients who want them to compete pricewise with machine translation (which is, of course, impossible) and have found themselves having to explain the pitfalls of Google Translate and other machine translation services in order to justify their rates. Some clients have finally “discovered” (perhaps after a negative experience!) that machine translation is not suitable for use in any but the most limited of circumstances, but it remains to be seen whether this new project to improve Google Translate services will lend a false illusion of reliability to what will nevertheless remain nothing more than machine translation.

Will it be possible to rely on the accuracy of a machine translated document by the year 2029? Will human levels of translation quality be reached by machines and software programs?

Translation and interpreting services have been traditionally considered human activities with little to almost no space for technical interventions. However, technical developments in language and translation software have led translators and interpreters to assume that their job will be highly influenced by machines by the year 2029.

Language is a living entity. It’s much more than a collection of isolated words and expressions. Each language embodies a cultural background, cultural concepts and a certain level of subtlety that even the most accurate and highly trained translator cannot translate perfectly.

In the video below, Mr. Ray Kurzweil –a well-known inventor, author and futurist- points out that translators and interpreters should embrace language-related technology advancements as a means of expanding their translating and interpreting abilities. No machine will ever be able to capture the subtlety in all languages as many expressions simply cannot be translated isolated and without context. He adds that even though there’s a natural resistance against translation machines, the truth is that the translated documents, both verbal and written, that they produce tend to get better and sound more natural over time. He accepts that machine translators may not be useful to translate romantic sentiments or more poetic forms but they are actually adequate for translating business discussions and everyday conversations.

According to Ray Kurzweil, when these technologies are first introduced, they tend not to work very well and people tend to dismiss them. They are perfected; they improve their performance and sneak up on us, and even though they seem revolutionary, they’ve been around for years already.

However, Kurzweil is cautious and emphasizes that translation technologies will not replace human translators and interpreters. By the year 2029, machines will be able to provide human levels of translation quality in certain type of translations and in certain translation fields but people’s need to learn foreign languages in order to enjoy and understand a literary piece in its source language or the need to rely on a professional translator to understand the meaning of a poetic writing will not be altered.

In a globalized world, accurate translation services are in great demand even if the economic context is not the best one. Translation companies can and should take advantage of translation technologies as they become available as they are useful tools that help them be ready for globalization and provide their clients with expanded language services.

Ray Kurzweil on Translation Technology from Nataly Kelly on Vimeo.

Amara is a large source of non-profit, crowdsourcing translations. The platform was launched by the creators of YouTube to translate as much video content on the web as possible, into as many languages as possible, as quickly as possible and as cheaply as possible.

What are the positive aspects of crowdsourcing translations?

More and more people worldwide choose to watch documentaries, films, TV series and other kinds of video content via the Internet instead of on television or via cable. The difficulty lies in not always being able to understand the languages spoken in online videos or in not being able to hear the content of the videos if you happen to be deaf or hard of hearing. Amara is a platform which hopes to eradicate these issues through crowdsourcing translation and so far it has proven itself to be very, very successful.

On average, Amara can translate and upload captions onto any film in 22 different languages within 24 hours. This effectively means that, in an incredibly short space of time, the content of that film can be watched across the globe and be made accessible to the deaf community or the hard of hearing. The most astonishing factor of Amara’s success is that the people who translate are volunteers – they’re people from the online community who simply sign-up to the platform and start translating in languages that they speak.

What are the possible problems faced by crowdsourcing translation platforms?

One of the biggest feats involved in the management of video content online, however, is the sheer volume involved. Translating online videos into 22 languages in the space of 24 hours is an impossible task for any ordinary translation company to take on, particularly when taking into consideration that all translators in translating companies are paid for their work. Amara recruits translators from all over the world for free, simply by reaching out to a community of online video-content enthusiasts who are only too happy to help when it comes to making internet content available to all.

One of the main issues with platforms like Amara is whether or not they are sustainable. If the Amara community begins to dwindle and volunteer translators stop translating at any point, the system will fail. In addition, there are lots of measures which have to be put in place in order to check the quality of the community translations and these measures require time, manpower and monetary investment. Amara’s philosophy is, without a doubt, a positive step forward for globalization and for the deaf/hard of hearing community, but the maintenance of the platform might prove to be unmanageable in the years to come.

What do qualified translators have to say?

Most translation companies and freelance translators who hold high-quality translation certificates show little support for platforms like Amara for obvious reasons. The idea that “anyone” can produce trusted, quality translations through crowdsourcing undermines the skills, qualifications and experience of professional, paid translators. It would appear that few people would argue with this point.

Crowdsourcing translations are no real match for the quality of paid translations by translation experts, but the translation of online video-content is such an overwhelming huge task that in some cases online users would argue that some kind of translation is better than no translation at all. Amara gives the deaf and hard of hearing community access to more online video-content from all over the world than ever before. The positives of this fact are indisputable.

Machine translation has been around for over 20 years now, with new software, programs and web applications being developed at an impressive rate. One of the main reasons for this relates to the importance of the Internet in our daily lives and its subsequent effect: globalization.

However, despite the continued efforts and creative ideas of the developers of machine translation, human translation still remains the predominant force within the translation industry. Human translation is, without a doubt, globally considered to offer the best service in terms of quality for one basic reason: accuracy.

Human translation will never be redundant

Machine translation might be quicker, might offer short fixes to immediate problems, it might be useful for translations of basic content needs (like the kind of information likely to be found in a Facebook or Twitter post, or the kind of information found in online forums), but machine translation will never beat human translation when it comes to accurate translations which take context, culture, local community knowledge and the nuances of language (such as metaphors, puns and humor) into account.

This is why, unlike a number of industries worldwide, the translation industry continues to grow year on year and professionals continue to train to become qualified translation experts. Fear of redundancy in the translation industry is very, very low.

What’s happening in the translation industry? What’s its growth like? What are the real figures we should be looking at?

The translation industry is not affected by recessions like most other private industries. The demand for translations is simply too high and this demand is a global one. The most “in-demand” job in the translation industry is for military translators and, according to research conducted by the Common Sense Advisory, the top 100 companies operating in the market generate anything from US$427 million to US$4 million on an annual basis.

Another report, undertaken by IbisWorld, reveals that translation services will most probably reach US$37 billion by 2018, with the United States being the largest market in the world, closely followed by Europe and then Asia. Both government sectors and private companies contribute to the demand for high quality translation across the globe. In fact, the United States Bureau of Statistics predicts the industry to grow by an incredible 42% by the time we get to 2020.

The Internet, globalization and rising industries

The incredible demand for translation expertise on a global scale is a positive sign for both machine and human translations sectors. As the Internet continues to provoke a surge in globalization, there will be more companies, organizations and individuals in need of both quick, concise translations, and detailed, quality translations; those which can only be completed by human translators who have a deep understanding of both the language, the culture and the context of the translation task that they have in front of them.

IBISWorld believes that the translation industry has gone way beyond the growth phrase and is now in the mature phase of its business cycle. By 2018, IBISWorld predicts the translation services will have increased at a rate of 4.7% per annum. The prediction for the global GDP growth for the same period is set to reach a mere 2.1% in comparison. Human translators are going to be needed to cope with such expansions. There’s little doubt that what they can offer in terms of accuracy and contextual knowledge will ever be beaten by a machine, search engine or software program, not matter how good it happens to be.

On a final note, for those translators working on translations for the medical and pharmaceutical industry, the prospects are even greater, particularly in the Asia-Pacific market. Translation services in this area of the industry and in this part of the world are expected to experience an increase of over 14% in the next four years.

Machines might be fast, but the translation industry is going to need plenty of human manpower to deal with the growing demands of globalization in the coming years too. There’s nothing which can beat that human touch.

Some believe crowdsourcing to be a viable option for the translation industry and others are concerned that speed, quantity and low costs are no match for quality human translations.

Crowdsourcing is a relatively modern process, normally undertaken online, which enables a crowd of people to join together to complete a work-related project or raise a sum of money for a worthwhile cause. The term “crowdsourcing,” a combination of the words “crowd” and “outsourcing,” is best exemplified as a successful process by Wikipedia.

The Wikipedia encyclopedia wasn’t created via the more conventional process of hiring writers and editors to generate the content. Instead, Wikipedia appealed to the masses, a “crowd” of informed and enthusiastic online users, who were given full authority to create the information on their own. Wikipedia, as a result, is the most comprehensive encyclopedia we have ever seen.

The idea is that, by appealing to a large crowd of informed people equipped with the ideas and skills necessary to do the job, contributing enthusiasts will not only generate quality content but they will also make sure that the content generated is consistently updated.

Crowdsourcing in the translation industry

Wikipedia might be an undoubtable example of crowdsourcing success, but that doesn’t mean crowdsourcing is an appropriate avenue for all industries or all projects on every occasion. The translation industry is not necessarily the right environment for this kind of venture, or so many translation experts believe.

The advantages

Machine translation a few years ago made a play to dominate the translation industry by proving itself to be quicker and cheaper than human translation (HT). It became clear that what was missing from the machine translation was the quality, care and accuracy which was guaranteed from human translation. The result was the development of computer-aided translation (CAT), the post-human approach to modern translation which combines the efficiency of computing techniques with human quality.

Crowdsourcing in the translation industry hopes to go one better than CAT. Crowdsourcing translations are human translations which hopes to guarantee the accuracy of the work. Particularly when taking the case of Amara, crowd-sourced subtitle translation service for Youtube, into consideration.

Amara with its $1 million grant, has proved that via its crowdsourcing efforts it can translate videos into 20 different languages within 24 hours. The translations are generated by YouTube fanantics and “online nerds,” authorities in their individual fields with the time, interest, dedication and knowledge to make contributions as part of a global effort to translate YouTube information as quickly as possible.

The disadvantages

One of the main issues with crowdsourcing translations is, as with all new things, once something goes out of fashion or fails to continue to capture interest, productivity can slow down or die without much time to find an alternative.

It’s doubtful that interest in the crowdsourcing translations for Amara on YouTube will decrease. YouTube is just too popular. Here are some basic YouTube facts to blow your mind…

• 60 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube per minute (to put that another way… one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second)
• More than 4 billion videos are viewed on YouTube every day
• More than 800 million unique users visit YouTube every month

Amara, therefore, is a translation project which already has the support of a huge number of online enthusiasts. Other translation projects might not be so popular and might risk standing the test of time. Crowdsourcing translations in some instances might simply run their course and it might be necessary to recruit paid translators to finish or continue the job anyway.

It’s also important to consider that while the Amara crowdsourcing community might be a crowd of video experts, translating into their native languages, they probably don’t have professional translation experience. Having subject matter knowledge and being a native speaker, doesn’t automatically make you an expert translator.

A number of industry experts believe that crowdsourcing translation projects still need to be monitored and edited or proofread by professional translators. In this sense the high quality, low costs and rapid results promised by crowdsourcing translation ventures, is nothing but a fleeting, well-disguised illusion.