Let’s be honest about what machine translation does brilliantly: it is fast, cheap and good enough for the internal document nobody outside the company will ever read. For understanding a contract draft at midnight, it has genuinely changed how we work.
The economics change the moment the text carries risk. A mistranslated price, a mistranslated disclaimer, a mistranslated product claim, these don’t cost a few pounds per word; they cost refunds, regulatory exposure and, worst of all, credibility in a market you just entered with such care.
There’s a brand cost too. Customers can feel machine text almost instantly: the slightly odd register, the literal idiom, the sentence that is grammatically perfect and says nothing. That impression compounds across every touchpoint – website, email, packaging – long after the translation invoice is forgotten.
The sensible answer isn’t either/or. Use machines for volume and speed; use humans for anything a customer, a regulator or a board will see. Put the money you save on the bulk into the handful of words that actually carry your reputation. That’s where the return lives.
– fin. Questions? Just ask.
We teach this stuff for a living.
Our training sessions turn posts like this into practical skills, clearer emails, smoother meetings, fewer cultural awkward moments.