google translate

I have heard about "google translate" before, but never used it before. Recently an acupuncture colleague sent me an English text, which he "put through google translate" and wanted me to have a look and if necessary iron out mistakes.

Well, what I received is frankly unintelligible! I have to translate the whole thing myself from scratch.

To check, I copied a 2-line Japanese text into the translation field and selected (a) German and (b) English as the target language.
The results are shown below.

Neither can be understood, unless you KNOW the Japanese meaning or else someone provides extensive explanations.
This proves, that "machine translation" will for some time NOT become any sort of thread to the service I provide.

Source text:
お世話になっております。
度々申し訳ないのですが、再度確認をお願い出来ますでしょうか。

Translations:
Wir verdanken.
Von Zeit zu Zeit tut mir leid, was kann ich den Scheck wieder.

We indebted.
From time to time I'm sorry, what can I have the check again.

Degrading translators

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Apparently I submitted a quote on a job offer through Proz.com, although I really do not recall that one. That company, "mygengo.com" replied yesterday:

"Thanks for your response to my ProZ ad regarding Japanese to English translation. It would be great if you could create an account on our website and begin our translator qualification process. There's an automated 5-question test and an approx. 300-word translation test that we require."

They want to check my "qualification", but then suggest to potential clients, that it is not necessary to pay for "a level of expertise". What about me???

So, I checked their website and found the following:

http://mygengo.com/translation-solutions/low-cost-translation/translation-prices/

mygengo.com:

"The question we asked ourselves was whether or not customers should always be paying for a level of expertise when they don’t actually need it. The answer we came up with was absolutely not."

My comment:

THAT is the wrong question when working with "real" humans, because the level of "expertise" (experience) of a translator is what defines him or her and cannot (or at least SHOULD not) be turned ON/OFF. Thus, requiring that a translator does NOT show any expertise is to my mind AT LEAST degrading to that translator or rather an outright insult!

mygengo.com:

"When comparing our services to others in the industry, we rates up to 70% lower AND we offer the same professional-quality.  We also provide a 100% money back guarantee. Our customers know that if they’re not satisfied, we’ll make it right."

My comment:

Should it not be "our rates are"? -> A mistake that should not occur on a professional website, where it is actually presented for the entire world to see.

"Money back guarantee" -> does that imply:

"No money for the translator when the customer does not feel like paying"? No, thank you. As a professional translator depending on my translation work for a living THAT is not an acceptable option. Or will this agency cover any such mood swings of the customer?

mygengo.com:

"Say good-bye to clumsy machine translations and expensive professional agencies. Welcome to myGengo."

My comment:

"Say good-bye to expensive professional agencies." This presumably means for the translator: "Say good-bye to proper/decent pay". As opposed to machines, real people (translators) need to eat! But if their work cannot (literally) "put food on their tables" , the only resource for the clients left will be those "clumsy machine translation" … And if the clients are companies that take pride in their products, they should also take pride in the translation of their materials.

mygengo.com:

"Standard translations at myGengo begin at just $0.05/word and $0.03/character (Chinese, Japanese and Korean). "

My comment:

MAYBE (?) people living in rural China or India can still afford to work for these (slave labor) rates. But not ANYBODY I know of, who is living in ANY of the developed countries of the world. Definitely I cannot afford to work for this rate here in Japan. The result would be STARVATION -> and this is NOT a joke!

Related articles

• One Hour Translation Unveils the First Online Machine Translation Detector (prweb.com)
• Comparative Study on Evaluation of Results/Quality of Statistical and Example Based Machine Translation Approaches in terms of Translation Power. The issue of influence of Machine Tanslation on Translators� work/ Performance. (thinkingbookworm.typepad.com)