The recent advances in technology are gradually turning the world into a global village. We can now get access to information online almost immediately, irrespective of our location or the language we speak.
Although language barriers are one of the significant issues we still face worldwide, most industries have dealt with these hurdles by partnering with website translation services to localize their website and make their products and services available to the audience in different languages. However, in some cases, machine translation might be enough to do the job just right.
Multilingual communication is key to the globalization of a company - this is why machine translation is essential for industries that serve a wide range of customers with different cultures and traditions. In this article, we will share 5 industries that can benefit from the automated translation.
As a lawyer, you’re probably going to find yourself working with a client who speaks a foreign language at one point or the other. If your client happens to be someone who works in the accounting or investment industry, you will need to translate important numeric documents as those industries often deal with calculations and large sets of data.
Hence, you would need to ensure adequate translation while working with clients in these kinds of fields to understand all the legal information properly in the local language, as legal-related matters are usually very sensitive when it comes to certain numeric data, phrases and wording. By using machine translation software, you would save quite a bit of time.
On the other hand, if you are dealing with a foreign client, you will need to translate all legal documents to understand the case properly. In this situation, hiring a trusted company that can provide professional language solutions to ensure accurate translation will be the best option.
This is another industry that has benefited from machine translation. E-commerce has made it possible for companies to easily do businesses, even with customers in other parts of the world. However, this may not be possible without machine translation.
Most customers prefer to shop on websites designed in their native language. It may be difficult to attract potential foreign customers if your products and services are offered in the language they do not understand. So you will need to localize your website if you are considering reaching a wide range of customers worldwide easily.
A nice option to achieve this will be by partnering with companies that offer language solutions for e-commerce to assist your business in running a multilingual help desk, adjust your products’ SKUs for multilingual SEO and more importantly work with to work directly with your CRM and CMS. However, if you need to translate the product categories, or products themselves, the machine translation might be just enough for this type of job.
The information technology industry has experienced immense growth lately. Companies within this industry interact globally, and most of them do not operate only within their country's borders. As a result, their projects sometimes need to be carried out in foreign languages.
Most information technology companies enlist a translation company's services to work on technical documents such as software or marketing materials in different languages to serve local customers in other countries and provide access to new technologies that can help reach a large number of people.
However, in the case of technical documents with basic terms or highly repetitive content, it would be easier and advisable to make use of machine translation software.
Translation is a crucial part of the medicine and health industry. Pharmaceutical companies and health practitioners are expected to provide clear information for customers to prevent errors that could endanger people or put their lives at risk.
There could be instances in the health sector, whereby the healthcare provider and the patient speak different languages and cannot come to an understanding, and there is no available professional translator to help out. In this situation, choosing to use a machine translator to assist in communicating with the patient and enable the medical personnel to provide a proper medical service would be the best course of action.
Therefore, machine translations are needed in the health sector. Machine translation might be used to translate diet sheets, medical reports, and records, doctors' prescriptions, patients' records, doctors' manuals, instructions, etc.
On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies considering expanding their business scope to a foreign country must translate all their content and drug-related information into the target country's language with absolutely no mistakes. In this case, it would be better to rely on human translators instead of the machine translation software.
The banking and finance industries are undoubtedly among those that benefit the most from machine translation due to their role in global trade and economy.
For companies within this sector to achieve international success, they must fit in with the local market of the target country, which can only be achieved by localizing their offers and contents to that country’s language.
Financial institutions that want to partner up with local banks in other countries will need services of companies that offer professional translations to provide accurate information and communicate with foreign clients effectively.
However, just as we mentioned in the case of the legal industry, companies that concern themselves with banking and finances benefit from machine translation as it’s the best way to translate large swaths of data. It is enough to make some edits manually later on, while letting the computer do the majority of the job.
It is worth mentioning that every industry can benefit from machine translation in one way or the other. So if your company does not fall into any of the highlighted industries above, that does not mean your business is exempt from the benefits.
Hiring companies that can offer localization and translation management software for your business will help you grow your business globally and increase its competitiveness. It will allow foreign customers who speak different languages to access your products and services.
However, it is important that you do your research extensively to identify the type of translation that your business needs, and which language is preferred by your target group. Be sure to go for those who have the knowledge and understanding of your business motives and goals.
Lastly, as an entrepreneur, if you need to ensure that the job is done just right, it’s advised to cooperate with professional translators and their revisers because unfortunately, machine translation isn’t perfect just yet.