Free Online Translation
(aka Machine, Automatic, Computer-Assisted or AI Translation)
FREE is the almighty, most sought after word on the internet. 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 other providers of free 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 translation tools are available to anybody to use and even improve them (remember their button "suggest a better translation"?), but when fully developed they will stop to be free.
In the meanwhile, they are FREE and let's see how you can use them.
Marketing Real Estate with Free or Human Professional Translation
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 sample listings from any website you manage to find in that language and translate them with the same online 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.
Most of the time you will be disappointed. But what do you do to attract foreign buyers to your properties online? Can you use free online translation tools anyway? The quick answer would be: it depends.
How Free Online Translation Can Hurt Your Business?
- You definitely can't use free (in other words - automatic or machine) translations in several important fields as medicine (you do not want somebody get killed or injured because of a computer mistake, right?); law (you do not want to pay huge compensations being sued because of a computer mistake, right?); and here comes MARKETING of course!
- Although in marketing mistakes are not that dangerous as in medical or legal translations, but having said that let's look at the outcome of our marketing efforts - will they bring us buyers, or will they make the potential buyers laugh or confused or just force to leave your property's description for others - presented in proper language?
- Never forget about localization as well - no free translator will take your target audience in consideration as a good human translator will (changing measurements, currencies, cultural features, etc. to those that are comfortable for the foreigners you want to attract)
- Thus, in general: in marketing free translation is ok for texts that are not for publishing! For example, you want to know what your competition advertise to foreign buyers in that foreign language - welcome to use free translations tools that are many on the internet, etc.
AI Translations
Years ago there was a trend among real estate site webmasters to slap a button "translate into other languages" on their websites, which led to Google Translate or another free online translator. The results were usually poor or very poor.
I wrote lots of articles on the topic explaining why it doesn't do any good for real estate websites. Nowadays I don't see many of such attempts, and if there is a button to switch languages, usually they lead to a human translated text in another language - good.
Today we see a new kid on the block in the translation field - AI Translations. I've tried several of them on samples of English to Russian and Russian to English real estate texts. To tell the truth, the results are much better now than in the past, but the major limitations are still here:
- Localization and cultural nuances are beyond the scope of abilities of the AI translation tools
- Mistakes still happen
In other words: if you use an AI Translator from a foreign language into your own where you are able to fix the text accordingly - considering the AI output as a draft only, it's ok.
BUT if you are trying to translate from your language into a foreign language which you don't know - be careful as you have no idea what kind of the text you have as a result. Such texts are not for publishing as your own!
How to Properly Use Free Online Translation in Real Estate Business?
The E-book *How to Use Free Online Translation in Real Estate Business* is a complete practical guide to the translation of your foreign marketing websites, listings, brochures and correspondence; also to interpreting for your foreign real estate buyers and ways to save on translation services (including the proper use of the free online tools) without losing the quality.
The book is selling on Amazon for only $2.99.
Please click on the cover below to go to Amazon:
Introduction to *How to Use Free Online Translation in Real Estate Business*
There
are many things to consider before starting to sell real estate to the foreign
buyers, and one of them is the language problem: How to properly deliver the
information on your properties to international investors and make them buy
from you? Will free translation tools accomplish the task?
This E-book is about the effective and appropriate procedures of translating and interpreting for the foreigners who are the prospective buyers of your properties, including the correct usage of the free online translation.
We discuss the following important for your success issues in the book:
* When to use free translation tools;
* When to use professional translators;
* How to choose the best translation providers;
* How to evaluate the quality of translations;
* How to save on translations.
Let’s talk about the best practices in international real estate marketing.
Have great business,
Olga Kellen,
English - Russian Translator,
Associate member of ATA,
American Translators Association
Contact for all your Marketing to Russians needs and questions
Also for your free English Russian translation quote