AI translation

Can you use AI to produce good translations? This is something a lot of our customers are wondering. While AI can certainly make the translation process more efficient and faster, you do need to make the right choices. HHCE can help you do that.

Translation tools and AI

Translators have been supported by translation tools and translation engines for decades now. These tools mainly improve the efficiency and consistency of translations, and AI has been added to the process as a next step. Professional translation agencies that use GenAI don’t use chatbots like ChatGPT or Copilot for translation. These tools are geared towards generating new content and while GenAI might be able to produce a translation, that’s not what it was designed for. And it’s actually not a good idea to ask a chatbot to translate something for you, as the results aren’t great. Translations by these bots need a lot of post-editing, which makes the translation process a lot less efficient. Professional translation systems combine different tools and this works well.

Combining different technologies results in the best translations

At the moment, a combination of the various technologies available is the best option. HHCE uses neural machine translations together with a translation database. The resulting translations are then post-edited by GenAI. So far, this produces the best translations, but the process doesn’t end there. The output improved by GenAI isn’t good enough to send to our customers. The texts contain translation errors, misinterpretations and inconsistencies, because GenAI really can’t do everything. To get rid of those errors, a linguist is needed to check the texts and take action where necessary.

The role of the linguist - post-editing

However good GenAI might be at editing a text, a linguist always needs to check and correct the text. Basically, GenAI is just a nifty translation assistant, but one that does make a lot of mistakes. That’s why a human translator or post-editor is always needed. It’s often the nuances, use of synonyms or ambiguities that AI doesn’t understand, but a linguistic professional will pick up on such errors and correct them.

Man and machine

Incidentally, using GenAI doesn’t automatically mean that all the translations generated are good enough to be post-edited. Some output takes the post-editor so long to fix that a human translator can translate the text better and faster. If you’re using GenAI, you should always look at how and why you’re doing that. Legal texts and manuals are rather suitable for Gen-AI and post-editing, for instance, but specialist texts, texts with a lot of humour or marketing texts are not. There’s no benefit in using GenAI for this sort of translation and it doesn’t make the translation process more efficient and cheaper.

Would you like your text translated?

You want to reach an international audience, naturally while maintaining the quality of your text. I’ll discuss your requirements and expectations in detail with you, and our translators will then get to work to provide you with the translation you’d envisaged.

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