In today's growing global market, businesses constantly seek ways to overcome language challenges and connect with more people. A key part of this growth is translating websites for different international audiences.
At LinguaLinx, as a Language Services Provider (LSP) with extensive digital experience, we know the traditional human translation process can be time-consuming and costly.
After all, it’s a huge undertaking, and hesitation can lead to allowing competitors to capitalize on being first-to-market and all the gains that come with that.
In this article, we'll look at how we worked with one of our clients to implement advanced Machine Translation (MT) methods to save them over 50% of their localization costs while maintaining high-quality results.
Our client wanted to translate its approximately 100,000-word website into multiple languages. The conventional approach involved hiring human translators or opting for a less expensive hybrid post-editing framework.
Both are possible solutions, but we suggested a unique strategy that involved splitting the content into different categories: Actionable User Interface (UI), Educational, and Legal sections.
The thought was that this would create separate workflows and a more manageable and cost-effective approach.
Upon categorization, our team found that most content resided in the website’s blog section. Blogs are prone to large amounts of text that grow week over week, month over month, and create a copy-heavy website when considered for translation.
This opened the door to explore an innovative solution: we used an AI-enabled MT service to tackle the blog translation while reserving human translators for crucial actionable and legal content.
In effect, the AI-enabled MT allowed us to focus on higher-cost resources where the business risk of inaccurate translation was highest.
AI-enabled Machine Translation is a comprehensive and strategic process designed to deliver high-quality translations while optimizing cost efficiency.
We work hard to hone this process, and train the AI, so that it’s constantly updated to provide the most accurate translations possible. This minimizes post-editing and saves on human resources.
The process we’ve developed has five steps:
To ensure the essence of the message and brand integrity, the first step involved a corpus keyword analysis.
This identified frequently used words and critical terms for the brand.
A professional translator then carefully translated these important elements and crafted a customer-centric glossary.
To ensure optimal results in the MT framework, the team crafted augmented source content.
This helps the MT engine grasp the context and nuances of the text and prevents aspects of source content creation from breaking or “confusing” the MT engine.
With extensive experience in MT engines, we evaluated content needs and language nuances.
This enabled us to choose the optimal MT engine for each content type and language pair, ensuring accurate and culturally relevant translations while preserving the original message's integrity.
Following the initial machine translation, the content was processed again through our advanced generative AI framework.
This sophisticated system was specifically designed to identify and correct common MT errors, enhancing the translation's overall accuracy, fluency, and ensuring a natural reading experience.
To assess the quality of the MT results, a statistically significant sample (approximately 350 segments) was selected from the population of 9,000.
This verification step gave us valuable insights into the effectiveness of the translation process.
It’s through these insights that we can continually improve the process and even tailor it to individual clients.
The cost savings from the AI-enabled MT approach were substantial. This prompted our client to consider enhancing the quality of their legal aspects.
They opted to have the terms and conditions and privacy policies ISO certified, ensuring compliance with international standards.
Additionally, our AI-enabled voice over service was utilized to properly localize video assets, further elevating the website’s User Experience (UX).
The combined efforts of the AI-enabled MT and the additional ISO and voice over services yielded great results.
The final cost of the localization project, including all these services, amounted to just 49% of what a traditional or hybrid model would have cost.
What matters to our client is that they had a great experience and saved money. What matters to us is that our client was happy. We became the linguistic arm of their business for this process and worked with them as a true business partner.
Our strategic incorporation of advanced MT methods and technologies helped them save over 50% of their website localization costs. By identifying the most suitable content types for MT and leveraging professional human translators for brand-specific elements, the project was a great success.
This potential of AI-enabled solutions in overcoming language barriers is immense. It can help expand global reach and optimize localization expenditures. In a rapidly evolving world, embracing cutting-edge technologies like our AI-enabled MT can be a game-changer for businesses seeking to thrive in the global market.
If you need a partner to help you with a translation project, we’d love to sit down and talk with you about it.
Our consultations are complimentary and commitment-free.
With LinguaLinx, you won't ever have to worry about your message getting lost in translation. You know you're in good hands with our ISO 17100 and ISO 9001 compliance, twenty years of professional translation experience, and the organizations whose trust we've earned.