Customized machine translation: large-volume translations with your unique company voice

Customized machine translation: large-volume translations with your unique company voice

05 Jun 2020

Machine translation is a great way for businesses to translate vast chunks of text in a short amount of time. Most generic machine translation solutions however do not reflect your brand voice by using your unique terminology. With a customized or personalized machine translation solution from Yamagata Europe, translations are always in line with the language of your organization.

It’s easy to forget how helpful machine translation can be in our daily life and work: just enter a paragraph online and nanoseconds later, you have a translation that is fit for use.

Though not perfectly accurate, machine translations are a cost-efficient solution for organizations that need large volumes of translated text within a tight deadline. Depending on the application area, these organizations may or may not decide to have their translated texts post-edited by a trained linguist or translator to improve the translation accuracy.

Translations with your company voice

However, it’s not the lack of accuracy in and of itself that poses a problem, but the fact that most generic machine translation engines are far too generic to reflect the terminology and unique voice of the company.

Let’s say we need to translate the English word ‘nut’. Does this word refer to the dry fruit with the woody shell or to the piece of metal that can be screwed down on a bolt? Not every generic machine translation engine will know depending on the context. Add the fact that in some markets specific terminology is a way to differentiate from one’s competitors, and you realize that customized machine translation is not a luxury.

With a machine translation engine that is personalized for the customer, our translation solutions will never ‘speak’ a standardized language, but the language, terminology and tone of voice inherent to the customer.

What does ‘customized’ or ‘personalized’ mean for Yamagata Europe?

  • First, not every machine translation technology will be suitable for your text type. That’s why Yamagata Europe continuously evaluates and compares the best technologies for your application.
  • For machine translation to be applied successfully, the chosen technology should be optimized to fit your needs. A personalized machine translation solution from Yamagata Europe will always be based on your corpus of existing translations. Also, the output will be enriched with your company-specific terminology and rules.

Why does your company need customized machine translation?

There are different scenarios where organizations could benefit from a customized machine translation solution.

Internal documentation

It may be obvious for companies with an international focus to translate customer-facing documentation like user or installation manuals. However, documentation for internal technicians and employees often doesn’t get translated. Especially for smaller markets, budgets can be tight, forcing company technicians to use the English documentation to the best of their abilities. Although not 100% accurate, customized machine translation could support employees who do not master the English language sufficiently.

Internal communication

In many global organizations, critical company communication like meeting reports and mail messages comes in vast amounts and is directed to a varied global audience. In such cases, customized machine translation may be the most efficient way to simply allow a varied group of employees to understand each other and collaborate.

Customer support

It becomes increasingly harder to meet the needs of today’s customer in a timely way, while budgets for customer support are decreasing. Customized machine translation can alleviate that problem. With real-time machine translation in between, it should be no problem for a German customer support specialist to have an online chat with a French customer.

Market research

Understanding the behavior and emotions of the customer who is buying and using your product is critical for any company that takes its customers seriously. Customized machine translation can be a cost-effective way to research and understandthe massive amounts of user-generated content such as online product reviews and social media content.

The Yamagata Europe advantage

When an organization chooses a machine translation solution or partner, multiple factors come into play, including quality, cost and timely delivery. At Yamagata Europe, we know what it means to manage a translation process that takes all these factors into account. For every customer, it means finding the right balance between human translation and machine translation, or a combination of both.  

When working with Yamagata Europe, your machine translation engine remains your unique asset. It is never shared with other customers or third parties. Moreover, your translation engine is continuously evaluated and optimized based on your own translation content, and if needed, different technologies are used for different applications or document types.

Do you need to translate vast amounts of text in a short time frame, but do you still want these translations to reflect your brand voice? Then customized machine translation can be a cost-efficient solution for you.