Although the translation software represents a quantum leap, DeepL falls short of the quality required for customer-facing communication. In conjunction with a native-speaker editor who has in-depth knowledge of your business, however, the service can help you save both time and money.
A good friend who speaks the local language is indeed a very useful ally in establishing your business in a foreign country. DeepL, the rising star in the machine translation galaxy, claims to be that helpful buddy. But can this friend really be relied upon, and what is it actually useful for?
The service no doubt represents a substantial improvement on Google Translate, which many companies have rightly lost faith in. It is also better than Linguee, offered by the same provider, at creating cohesive texts. In fact, translators have had to face up to the fact that machine translation is now disrupting their market.
The difference in quality from previous translation engines is so dramatic, in fact, that some companies have thrown caution to the wind. Translator forums are now alive with discussions about translation errors created by DeepL. Worse still are the errors that go undetected. My experience is that words are occasionally used out of context or misunderstood. This is especially true in the realm of products and marketing, where language is carefully chosen to reflect a deliberate depiction or image.
DeepL will certainly do a better job than a lot of your own staff at creating understandable texts which are relatively free of serious mistakes, and save valuable time. This is sufficient for internal texts, but is error-free really a good enough goal for marketing and other customer-facing texts? Amongst the flood of messages swamping the social and marketing media, your communication has to stand out from the crowd. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your money.
This trade-off between quality and savings lies at the heart of the machine translation conundrum. While DeepL indeed saves time and money, the quality will never be the same as a great translation by a highly-skilled human who knows and cares about your business.
Most companies using the service have become aware of the importance of using a native-speaker editor/translator to work closely with the company to ensure that texts maintain creativity and emotional appeal, in addition to excluding embarrassing and potentially damaging errors. In the best case, the editor will have a close working relationship with the client, and be provided with the original texts and the DeepL translation. My experience is that DeepL plus editing is likely to provide you with about 90% of the quality at 50% of the price. Such savings are difficult to ignore, unless the very best quality is non-negotiable.
The cost-effectiveness of using machine translation is sure to change the way that translators work in the future, with translators acting as expert editors and copywriters in addition to doing traditional translating work. In reality, this has been the trend for some time now, as companies look to stretch their marketing budgets in this age of increased communication.
I’ve always taken the position that what’s good for my clients is good for me, too. Perfect Word offers an editing service for machine-translated texts and the response from the market has been very positive. If your company is already using DeepL, this may well be an option worth testing.