What distinguishes a basic translation from a professional one produced by our translators?

The main difference between a poor quality translation and a professional one is the human factor. In fact, using the dictionary definition, we can see the huge gap between the two. Rough means crude, rustic, without precision or finesse, hastily produced.

Machine translation is often carried out by one or more software programs and is rarely used as a starting point by human translators, which is why it is called rough translation. One of the most widely used programmes for a simple and immediate, but not professional, translation is Google Translate, which uses rules and algorithms to analyse the text and propose an approximate translation, without contextualising the words, giving an inaccurate result.

It is often the case that this technology is used for short sentences or simple concepts, where the translation may be satisfactory, but when a company needs to translate a legal document, the automatic translator will never be able to understand the professional context. It must be acknowledged that Google Translate, for example, can use its algorithms for technical texts where terms appear with unambiguous meanings, with a minimum chance of misunderstanding or being taken out of context.

Although a machine may be able to approximate the meaning of a text, the aim of our translators is to provide an artistic service, using methods that enable them to produce fluent and reliable texts. An online machine translation tool can only work with words that have a programmed meaning. If, on the other hand, you want a professional text, you need to entrust the work to someone who pays close attention to contextual features. Most of the texts entrusted to us have a strong cultural connotation and the intervention of the human translator is essential to achieve good results, avoiding problems in identifying certain linguistic mechanisms such as idioms.

Google Translate translates almost all languages, but not professionally

Google Translate does not support all of the world’s languages, and there are some lesser-known languages that are not supported by its algorithm. This system can be a quick fallback solution, but it does not respect the context of the text and cannot translate languages spoken by millions of people. For urgent translations, it is always better to rely on native speakers who are able to understand and contextualise the text in a professional manner. Let’s see which languages Google Translator doesn’t support:

Google’s automatic translator does not ‘speak’ Aramaic, unlike the almost 2 million people living in the Middle East. Aramaic is one of the oldest languages in the world; one of its versions was spoken at the time of the Bible.

Il valenciano è una lingua parlata da oltre 1.4 milioni di persone e non è presente nel più grande traduttore automatico online. Come per tante altre lingue, il valenciano viene classificato come dialetto del catalano anche se in molti credono che sia una lingua indipendente della Spagna.

Il bikol è parlato da oltre 2 milioni e mezzo di madrelingua, nell’isola a sud delle Filippine che si chiama Luzon. Il territorio filippino è stato fortemente influenzato dallo spagnolo, essendo stata fino alla fine del 1800 una colonia sotto le dipendenze di Madrid.

The 5.5 million Wolof speakers cannot use Google Traslate. This language, native to Senegal, is not within the algorithm, despite the fact that it is also spoken in Gambia and Mauritania and is constantly expanding.

Kirundi is the official language of Burundi, spoken in Uganda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Spoken by almost 9 million people, it is not possible to use an automatic translator to get to know even the simplest words.

Akan is an ancient African language spoken by 9.5 million people, mainly in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo. Traditionally, Jamaicans and Surinamese tell tales in Akan.

Assanese is spoken by 15 million people and originates from the Indian state of Assan, famous for tea and silk. Despite its ancient roots, dating back even before the 7th century BC, it has not yet entered Google Translator’s list of languages.

Bhojpuri, originating in India and south-eastern Nepal, is an Indo-Aryan language ignored by the famous automatic translator, although it has been growing exponentially in recent years. It is also spoken by 40 million people in the Caribbean, South Africa and parts of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Maithili is the second language spoken in Nepal, recognised as one of India’s 22 official languages. It has almost 34 million native speakers, but they cannot use Google Translator to text from their native language into other target languages.

If you are interested in one of these languages and need specialised translation, for transcription services, subtitles and more, you can contact us for more information.

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