Merits And Demerits Of Using Translation Equipment | The Communication Blog

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Merits And Demerits Of Using Translation Equipment

By Alyce Larson


Societies can only be made if their members can communicate effectively. This requires such groups to have a common language which members can understand. As a result, it is possible to pass information from one person to another with ease. Through this, someone can easily give instructions to another person and be certain that they would be executed effectively. People from different communities and countries however speak different languages, which are very different from those spoken by other communities. This necessitates people to learn a foreign language to be able to translate to those who wish to communicate but lack a common language. This eliminates the language barrier between such people. People also have an option of using translation equipment. Such appliances have their own set of pros and cons.

Human translators are quite expensive to maintain since they are constantly paid whenever there is need to translate any document or conversation. This makes it quite expensive in the end considering the fact that they may be paid depending on the words translated or on hourly basis. Machine translators are a onetime investment, which make them cheaper in the long-term.

The speed at which these appliances work is impressive compared to the snail speed with which human translators work. Humans may take hours or even days to translate a bulky or lengthy assignment as compared to such appliances that have the ability to do such work instantly. This eliminates any delays experienced in performing urgent translations.

Whenever you own such appliances, you are assured that they will deliver the same level of quality whether having worked for a minute or 24 hours. This is contrary to hiring humans since they take sick offs, can only work for few hours a day, and have to go for leave days. In addition, you have the option to rent out your systems to someone in need thus becoming an extra source of revenue.

Many electronic language conversion appliances are internet supported. This allows people to convert one language to another with ease despite their geographical location. This is however not the case with hiring humans to do the same job since you have to transport them to be physically present to do the job, which is very costly. Certain systems can also be used to enable to telecommute though they are very expensive.

These systems however have a limitation on the manner in which they translate different languages. They are designed to use synonyms and word meanings thus may not have the ability to relay the exact message that someone is communicating. This can have devastating results if not used appropriately since the recipient may easily misunderstand the message being passed across.

People who have learned another language or are natives in a certain language find it easy to relay more sensible information to the recipient of a message compared to machines. This is because such systems may not have all the words and their contextual meanings. As a result, the quality of their translated messages is likely to be very low.

Though the use of translation equipment has many benefits such as speed, the quality of output is significantly low. This necessitates human proofreaders to determine whether the message being is clear. This means humans cannot be eliminated from the translation business.




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