With the growing demand for brand translations, the need for advanced machine translation technologies is also increasing. Translation companies are perfecting their machine translation tools to reduce the gap between professional linguists' translations and automated translations.

Whether you're a language service provider or a global business that wants to dominate the global marketplace, having a professional language translation tool is your key need. Most global companies generate translations by combining machine translation engines with human translators' post-editing. However, with a lot of machine translation engines available online, you must have the right knowledge to choose the best MT engine in a reliable language service provider platform.

Read this article to learn more about machine translation engines and how you can access the credibility of a professional MT engine.

What Is a Machine Translation Engine?

An MT engine is an automated translation generation tool that uses powerful AI algorithms to create translations. You have to provide the required data to your MT tools to generate a more relevant and accurate translation. For instance, you must provide brand glossaries for each translation project separately. Similarly, the translation memory in your MT tool can help you generate faster and consistent translations throughout your translation project. Some machine translation engines also come with advanced quality assurance features. So you can test your translation's quality without leaving the translation engine. You can also customize your MT engine features as per your needs.

Understand Your Translation Requirements

Before choosing the right MT engine for you, first, you have to carefully assess your translation needs. Your need for a machine translation engine may vary based on your unique translation content type, budget, deadlines, and language pairs. First of all, you have to evaluate the type of content you want to translate. Is it genetic content or technical? Do you want to translate blog posts or marketing copies? Which language pairs need to translate to and from? Some engines are good with specific languages, so you can take them into consideration. Similarly, there are other factors, such as the budget you have for translations and how much data you have to translate on a regular basis.

How To Access MT Engines?

There are some methods and practices that you may use to assess the credibility of your machine translation engine. To access your MT tool, you can simply get feedback from your translation teams about the performance and productivity of an MT engine. You can then compare the data gathered from your team with other industrial research conducted by translation companies and technology innovation leaders.

In this method, the numeric data is gathered and calculated to access the performance score of a machine translation engine. For the evaluation of machine engine quality, the numeric score is compared to the human analysis.

If you are working with a cloud-based enterprise translation solution or TMS tool, it might have features to automatically choose the best MT engine for your translation project. Here you don't have to do any manual assessments; your MT tools are automatically selected by your TMS algorithms.

Customized Or Generic | Which MT Engine Is Better?

Based on your translation project scope, you can choose either a generic or customized MT engine. An example of a generic machine translation tool is Google Translate or Bing. You don't have to insert any translation glossaries or specific instructions to generate translations. The outputs would be generic too, and you may face consistency and relevancy issues. So, you don't expect these engines to work as per your topic or industry; you will get generic translations. These engines are typically free of cost, or you have to pay a very small amount to use them.

On the flip side, there are customized MT engines. These engines are specifically designed for a specific industry or domain. For instance, you may find many MT engines that are good with medical translations but could totally mess up financial translations. Moreover, such engines also work with translation glossaries and have a large collection of translation memory related to your field that allows them to generate industry-specific translations. These engines are typically more expensive than generic tools. Moreover, it may take more time and effort to maintain and set up machines such as translation engines.

Other Factors to Consider

Language Service Provider Pricing

Your budget and pricing are important factors to consider while working with a professional language service provider platform with an advanced MT engine. The more advanced features your engine provides, the higher price you may need to pay to use it. So, you can compare the pricing of different MT vendors to choose the most suitable one based on your translation needs.

Legal Requirements

Some MT engines have strict legal requirements, so you must go through them before getting your hands on them. Your engine might have some restrictions regarding storage, localization, and file transfer. Moreover, they have some security and data management policies that you should be aware of. Make sure your MT engine provides good information security and keeps your data confidential. Similarly, if you are dealing with critical data, such as legal or financial document translations, you may have some issues with machine translations. For instance, some documents are required to be translated by certified professional linguists only.