Lower translation costs
With machine translation, we’ll save your time and cut your costs. By up to dozens of percent.
Just like 15 years ago during the arrival of CAT tools, which fundamentally sped up translation while retaining top-rate quality, we are also fully open towards you today. Machine translation technology has reached the phase where it can bring you significant cost savings and faster delivery of your texts. We have therefore started offering MT services, and we’d like to briefly describe when and how they can help you.
David Moznar
Effectivity leader
What is machine translation?
Machine translation is fully automated translation of texts from one language to another. You can think of it as software that, with the help of artificial intelligence based on neural networks, is able to translate even huge quantities of text in a fraction of the time it would take a human translator.
But don't be misled, a human translator’s work is irreplaceable in the steps after that. Machine translation can save a lot of time, but it is still not at a level where its output can be used directly without later editing. For now, experienced linguists must always carefully review and revise these texts. Machine translators’ outputs sometimes contain stylistic mistakes or errors of fact that can be critical flaws for some translations.
Ask for a non-binding offerThe Benefits of Machine Translations from ZELENKA
Incorporation of special customer requests
Higher delivery speed
A guarantee of complete security for the translated data
The top-rate quality you’ve come to expect
When is machine translation a suitable choice?
Machine translation is often used today for a clearly defined set of text types and specific fields. And for these, it is exceptionally useful – it cuts costs and speeds delivery. They include texts such as:
- technical documentation
- manuals
- legal translations
- terms and conditions
- and general texts with standard terminology and style
When on the other hand is machine translation a poor choice?
We definitely do not recommend it for creative texts such as marketing and literary texts. In general, stylistically demanding texts of any kind are unsuited for machine translation. For the moment they demand such large adjustments by a human translator that it is still more efficient for a human to do them from the start.
Free publicly available machine translators – completely unsuited for companies’ needs
Customers’ most frequent questions surrounding machine translation relate to free publicly available machine translators. Whether it’s enough to just upload texts into them and be done. Unfortunately, publicly accessible machine translators have a number of problems, which we’ve described in our article on the benefits and pitfalls of machine translation.
Put simply, you should never use them for translations of company documents.
The difference between a paid, professional machine-translation service and public automatic translators of any kind is immense. Free publicly available machine translators have multiple fundamental limitations, and no professional translation agency uses them today. Or at least they should not.
Professional machine translation services
Publicly accessible machine translators
An unlimited amount
of translated texts.
of translated texts.
A limited amount of text that can be translated for free.
Supports all file formats.
Limited file-format support.
Contractually guaranteed data confidentiality and security.
Confidentiality of information is not preserved, and infractions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can occur.
Support for translation tools and translation memory, ensuring good terminology management and consistency among translations.
Does not offer integration into a translation tool and the use of your translation memory. Your texts therefore will have inconsistent terminology.
Quality comparable with a human translation.
Occasional very serious and even critical errors in the unedited MT output.
Can be highly adapted to a requested style, terminology and customer preferences. See our blog article.
Uses general style
and terminology.
and terminology.
Allows for the integration of feedback from the customer or human proofreaders and thus better MT results for all future orders.
Feedback from the customer or human proofreaders cannot be effectively integrated into the translation.
Publicly accessible machine translators
A limited amount of text that can be translated for free.
Limited file-format support.
Confidentiality of information is not preserved, and infractions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can occur.
Does not offer integration into a translation tool and the use of your translation memory. Your texts therefore will have inconsistent terminology.
Occasional very serious and even critical errors in the unedited MT output.
Uses general style
and terminology.
and terminology.
Feedback from the customer or human proofreaders cannot be effectively integrated into the translation.
And what about machine translation and security?
What are machine translations like in terms of quality?
Because errors can occur in machine translations and, while rare, can be critical, the translations are always edited and revised by experienced human translators.
During this “post-editing” process, the terminology used and contextual continuity are checked, and the style and overall language are fine-tuned based on customer preferences. By doing this we guarantee your texts are completely error-free and will fully meet your requirements.
And what about machine translation and security?
Just as with regular translations, we guarantee complete confidentiality of texts for machine translations too. We use thoroughly secured and backed-up servers and the strictest of security protocols so that your texts will never get mixed in with those of other customers, nor will they leak to the public.
Interested in more details on machine translation? We have the answers!
The topic of machine translations is a very broad one, and so we have prepared a special sub-page with your most frequently asked questions. On that page we go into more detail, and we believe you’ll learn many interesting things. You’ll find it here: Machine translations from Zelenka – FAQ