A human translation is the opposite of a machine translation (MT). It is a translation carried out 100% by a human translator.

Before the arrival of Google Translate and DeepL, all translations were human translations. We didn’t have any other options because the technology didn’t exist. 

However, now that machine translations (MT) are so prevalent, clients have a choice. They can select a human translation or an MT as their preferred modality.

As you can imagine, there are many benefits to human translations. In fact, our company now has a number of contracts with clauses specifying that we can only provide these clients with human translations. This is a particular focus in Bogotá, Colombia, and is also a trend in the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean. So why would you choose a human translation?

The benefits of human translations

• Machine translations feed the text that they translate into their algorithm, improving the software while at the same time violating the privacy of the data contained in the text. Many clients prefer that the content of their documents is not publicly available. When you put a document into translating software, it instantly becomes the property of these platforms.
• A human translation is exclusively produced by the mind of the translator. As a result, it will always read more naturally and have a better flow than a machine translation. It is almost always more interesting to read than a text produced by software and then edited by a translator.
• In a machine translation, the software isn’t perfect. This means that it’s easy to lose a footnote, a bullet point or a sentence. These are errors that the translator doing the post-translation editing (PTE) might not always correct.
• Better translations. MTs add the most commonly-used word for a specific term. A human translator knows, or can investigate, the most accurate translation for that term, which is not always the most obvious choice.

Human translations will never go out of fashion. They are particularly sought after in the translation of books, technical reports and academic journal articles due to the complexity of these types of documents.

ONG Traducciones offers human translations. You can find out more about this service by clicking here.