The bottom line? Don’t get sucked in by “shiny object syndrome.” What’s important is that your content makes sense and engages customers in all of the languages you choose to do business in. You can’t afford to take the easy way out when your business reputation is on the line – no matter how cool it might look or how “magical” it might seem.
Need help? See “ How to Choose a Translation Company” for more details on how to find a great translation provider.Īnd of course, you should never use the machine translation option for any situation in which clarity and accuracy are important. With Xerox Easy Translator, this is already done for you and you don’t get to choose the company you work with. And as with most service providers, it’s best to choose one yourself so you can find the right fit. If you’re going to be using translation services on a regular basis, it’s probably a better idea to work with a translation company directly. But translated content often requires changes in design and typesetting to make sense and look good in the target language.Īs usual with solutions that depend heavily on machine translation, when you really dig down you can see that the use cases for business and government are more limited than they seem at first glance. Global businesses often need help with transcreation, tweaking or even reimagining marketing campaigns so that they work in other countries and cultures.Īlso, Xerox touts the convenience of being able to translate documents while keeping the same design and format. These days, there’s more to translation services than just straight translation. But what if your business has frequent, ongoing translation needs? Wouldn’t it make more sense to partner with a translation agency? This may make sense for occasional translation. The standard machine translation service costs between $.05 to $1 per page, depending on how many pages you think you’ll need to translate. “Professional” translation (done by a human for accuracy) is. “Express” translation (machine translation edited by a human so that it makes sense) is. According to Xerox, you should consider paying for their “Express” Service merely to ensure “coherent and fluent translation results.” That said, we’re a long way from Star Trek. Want accuracy? You’ll need to pay for a human, just like always.Īctually, forget accuracy. Machine translation has made great strides over the past few years.
As an additional benefit, you can quickly decide the appropriate type of professional human translation service needed.” “Machine translation results are draft translations allowing you to receive an instant, editable document regardless of size. While you can get a translation very quickly, don’t expect it to be accurate.
But here’s the thing. The “Instant Translation” feature uses machine translation (of course). The big draw with Xerox Easy Translator is the ability to insert your document into the copier and instantly print it out in another language. Xerox Easy Translator: Should You Use It? What’s really interesting here is the business partnership between Xerox and ABBYY LS, which handles human-sourced translations. Adding these features to one of the most boring pieces of office equipment certainly ups the “wow” factor, though.