Free Online Translation
What is the almighty, most sought after word on the Internet? Right, it is FREE. Free online translation including, of course.
Why is some stuff free? There might be some reasons for that:
- it does not cost anything (or not much) to the provider as a promotion tool
- it leads to a future purchase
- it has no value
Talking about FREE translation, how come that a professional business service can be FREE? What's the catch?
We have to acknowledge that Google and others providers of free online translation services spend lots of money on developing and improving those complicated artificial intelligence tools, so the first reason does not apply.
So, we can guess that the second and third reasons describe the situation better - while developing the free online translation tools are available to anybody to use and even improve them (remember their button "suggest a better translation"?), but when developed they will stop to be free.
In the meanwhile, they are FREE and let's see how you can use them.
Example of Using Free Online Translation
in Real Estate Business
Let's say you are a real estate broker who used some FREE advice to bring foreign buyers to your listings in a FREE way. The advice was to translate your listings with a free online translation tool into a foreign language(s) and put these translated listings on your website. Done. Bingo! Foreign buyers will come. But will they?
For now, we leave alone pure Internet things. I mean that people usually use search engines in their own languages; and your translated website has to be submitted and promoted to foreign search engines to be found, etc., etc., etc. It's another chapter of the story, called "Foreign Internet". We concentrate on the Translation part of the business here.
Okay, you translated your listings into a foreign language for free. As you don't know the foreign language, you have no idea what your foreign readers will actually get, right?
To have the idea, you can try the other way around - get that foreign language real estate listings from any website you manage to find in that language and translate them with the same
free online translation
tool into English. Now you can see how good their foreign listings look in your own language and thus have the approximate idea how good or bad your listings will look in their language.
Here are real life examples of two condo listings in Moscow translated with a free online translation tool from Russian into English:
"2 x-rooms apartment, 15 min.tr., 60/34 kitchen 9; 12/17 et.pan.doma built in 2003, raspashonka, zast.lodzh. Tel., Choir. Compiler., yurid.i nat. Free."
and
"2-x k.kv. M. Leninsky Prospekt Vernadskogo Pr d.98 k1 2 / 28 K / M 142/70, 3 / 18 rooms 18 +18 +35 dining author's apartment with furniture repair 2 san.uzla ter.shikarny fenced gate, security, videonablyudenie.vozmozhna sale of the mortgage."
The listing price for the first condo is approximately $250,000 in ruble equivalent and for the second one is approximately $2,500,000!
You are probably thinking: Hmmm... What's the hell??? What the "furniture repair" has to do with you if you have two and a half million of dollars to spend??? Will you be interested in any of the condos as a foreign buyer? Right, you'd better leave this stupid website for good...
Now, I can tell you that the original listings in Russian make perfect sense to me, a human translator who knows both languages and cultures. I have to admit though that the original listings use some abbreviations, grammar irregularities and Russian real estate slang, that's why they are hard on free translation tools.
Apart of the abbreviations and slang, to translate the real estate listings correctly, one has to know many things like the following: Russians measure in square meters instead of square feet, they define the number of rooms and the area of a home or condo differently, etc., etc., etc.
Okay, here we are with the correct human translation of the above Moscow condo listings in comparison with the FREE:
"1-bedroom, in 15-minute walk from the nearest underground station, approx. 650 sq. ft., eat-in kitchen, 12th floor of the 17-floor building, built in 2003, with a den, phone, in good condition, with a clean title, not occupied."
Compare with what we had to decipher before:
"2 x-rooms apartment, 15 min.tr., 60/34 kitchen 9; 12/17 et.pan.doma built in 2003, raspashonka, zast.lodzh. Tel., Choir. Compiler., yurid.i nat. Free."
And the second, ten times more expensive condo, much bigger, better and in a much better building and location:
"2-bedroom, 2-bathroom, near the underground station "Prospect Vernadskogo", in Leninskiy Prospect St. (the exact address follows), approx. 1,500 sq. ft., huge living room combined with dining room, 3rd floor of the 18-floor building, furnished, interior design of a well-known designer, gated, beautiful hallway, security, video surveillance cameras, buying on a mortgage possible."
Also compare with the free online translation we had before:
"2-x k.kv. M. Leninsky Prospekt Vernadskogo Pr d.98 k1 2 / 28 K / M 142/70, 3 / 18 rooms 18 +18 +35 dining author's apartment with furniture repair 2 san.uzla ter.shikarny fenced gate, security, videonablyudenie.vozmozhna sale of the mortgage."
See the difference now? No "furniture repair" anymore, but a designer's interior perfection instead... There are still some rather strange things for you as an American real estate broker - what do they mean by that a title is clean or one can buy a condo on a mortgage??? How is it possible to be any other way??? And what is so special about that phone they advertise??? I thought I could be able to manage with a phone on my own somehow... Well, these are some Russian real estate market peculiarities that a foreign buyer has to learn not to get into any trouble there... It's one more other chapter of the story, called "Cultural Differences".
Let's go back to the Translation business now. Would you like your foreign prospects, buyers or partners to read about you and your services in their own language something like the machine translations you read in English in the above real life examples???
So, use free online translation tools for getting a rough idea of an email or website and the like, but please don't compromise your business with FREE translations.
Have a great business,
Olga Kellen,
English - Russian Translator,
Associate member of ATA,
American Translators Association
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