Choosing the right translation process isn’t easy. Each one—human translation (HT), machine translation (MT), post-edited machine translation (PEMT), and crowd human translation—has its benefits and drawbacks. Some are more expensive than others. Some offer the highest quality, but take more time. Finding the translation solution that will help your project get off the ground and land successfully in your destination? It’s complicated. However, we’ve developed five rules to make the decision-making process simple.

Ready?

Rule #1: Understand the differences between services

Familiarizing yourself with the lingo is the first step to finding what works best. Make sure you can tell the differences between HT, MT, PEMT and crowd translation. HT can offer tailored translation solutions ideal for smaller projects or those that require mastery of the subject (or precision with localization). MT works best with technical manuals and similar languages. PEMT works well with similar language pairs, but if the topic requires specialist knowledge, post-editors can’t always be relied on to provide it. Crowd offers a balance of scalability, quality and cost, but may be more than you need.

Rule #2: Ensure you’re ready

Before contacting a translation vendor, it’s important to be very clear on what you need in terms of scalability, quality and cost. It’s equally important to be clear on how translation will be handled internally. Have you designated who will judge quality yet?

Rule #3: Experiment before commitment

Before engaging a vendor for a large project, hire them for a smaller trial project. That way you can see their actual work with production-level resources.

Rule #4: Use different solutions for different purposes

We love the mix n’ match approach to translation, because there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Most companies have a variety of projects, from landing page translations, to marketing material translations, all the way to translations of blockbuster video games with hundreds of voice actors. Some projects require precise, thoughtful translations that capture the nuance and intentions of the original text. Other projects simply need the words to be understandable, like for technical manuals. Depending on the sizes and types of your projects, you’ll find that you can get better results with far better prices by finding agencies that are ideally suited to each task.

Rule #5: Understand how crowd providers work

Crowd providers have opened up a huge new industry for good quality, human-style translation that can scale. It’s an ideal solution for the types of projects that require close, human, attention to detail—but are too large for HT agencies to handle. If you have a high volume of work, we highly recommend that you learn more about crowd translation (and we’re happy to help with that!).

If your company has different types of content, using different solutions for different purposes may offer better value for your dollar. Still not sure which type of translation service will work best? Contact us for a free consultation.

For more information on what each type of translation service can offer your project, download our free white paper, Making sense of translation services, to find out what you need to know to confidently reach a decision.

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