Why FMCG manufacturers shouldn’t choose fast moving machine translation

Fast moving consumer good (FMCG) manufacturers are constantly updating production lines and marketing materials, and AST are here to help you simplify your translation procurement process. It’s all too easy to opt for the quicker options in a world of fast food and convenience, but is free, online machine translation worth the risk for your company?

Machine translation – what does this mean?

Machine translation (sometimes abbreviated to MT) is a form of translation that doesn’t involve a human linguist, or the associated costs, at all (Google Translate, for example). As tempting as that sounds, instant translations can cause some embarrassing errors which might end up costing you more than your reputation. Instead of using MT, AST offers a fast, professional translation service using human translators and proofreaders, favouring consistency, quality and confidentiality over convenience.

Fast professional translation at AST

We aim to give you the most efficient service possible and that starts right from your initial enquiry. Our project management team will help you get the best out of our services, advising you on turnaround times or resolving queries before the text even reaches a translator. AST’s team of translators work roughly at 2000 source words per day and if a proposed deadline isn’t feasible based on this rate, we will offer you a best delivery or we can even discuss splitting a translation between multiple suppliers. This is something we always run by our clients as quality and consistency are our main priorities, something that isn’t considered by MT.

Translation memories – creating reference material for you

If a document is suitable, we can translate it in a computer-assisted translation (CAT) tool to help us with consistency even further. The tools we use enable us to create translation memories (TMs) for our clients and these databases can store previously translated words or sentences. This means that we can translate future documents more quickly and we can keep your commonly used phrases consistent. By avoiding MT, we can also keep your translations confidential. Online MT tools are often seemingly free but come at a price since they reserve the right to store the data you enter.

Crystal clear translations

You may have come across some unusual linguistic choices while on holiday abroad or even in restaurants with translated menus – words are often incorrect in the context which is a dead giveaway that MT or non-native speakers have been used. MT isn’t always able to find suitable translations for words that have more than one meaning. The result can often be confusing and unhelpful, not to mention embarrassing. An advantage of assigning our professional human translators to your projects is that when they come across these ambiguities, they can research the context or even contact you to double check what is meant in the source text, saving you time in the long run and avoiding inaccuracies in the translation.

What can I do to get an even faster professional service?

We always do our best to offer a fast and efficient service, but there are some things you can do as a company to help your language service providers. Here are our top tips to help with translation procurement:

• Send an email with all the details to office@astls.co.uk. Attach the files you need translating and let us know which language combination(s) you need. Include any special instructions and whether you have a deadline in mind.
• It’s always useful for us to have the finalised files with us from the beginning. This helps prevent any delays that might occur if things are changed in the source files along the way.
• If you have any reference material or background information you think might be useful, send that along with your enquiry or your confirmation so we can get it to our translator as soon as possible.
• In case you need a large text translating for a tight deadline, you might find it more time efficient to preempt our questions about splitting texts between translators. If you need advice about the pros and cons of doing this, speak to one of our project managers.

If you have a translation project that you’d like to discuss with us, contact one of our project managers to see how we could help or request a free quotation