Machine translation (MT) is currently being employed in areas like customer support, e-commerce, healthcare, education, government resources, instruction manuals and social media in order to enable multilingual communication in a cost-effective way.
While it’s been around for decades, it’s only in recent years that individuals and organizations have started relying on it for their everyday needs. So much so that, according to Technavio, the global machine translation market is estimated to grow by $1.5 billion between 2024 and 2029.
As machine translation becomes more and more accessible, the debate around its ability to provide high-quality, accurate and reliable results grows more heated and complex. Is it a game-changer or a recipe for disaster? Will it replace human translators or simply become a tool in their arsenal?
Setting the stage💡Before we explore each use case individually, why not get a refresher on what machine translation actually is and how it works?
A choice between speed and quality
Many people think of machine translation as a magical solution that can handle all their translation needs in the blink of an eye. While the idea of a perfect, instant, universal translator has always fascinated the popular imagination, the Babel fish from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy remains firmly in the realm of science fiction.
The truth is that, on its own, machine translation is only able to translate simple, low-stakes content: it’s a practical tool for conveying basic meaning in a quick, unpolished way. The reason? Its lack of cultural and contextual intelligence.
“Machine translation, at its best, automates the easier part of a translator’s job”
— Claude Piron, former translator for the UN and the World Health Organization
Machine translation struggles with nuance, tone, consistency and idiomatic expressions — all of which are essential for clear, effective communication. It doesn’t see words as words, but as data. A sequence of ones and zeroes. How can we expect it to understand the intent behind those ones and zeroes?
Small typos and misplaced commas in the source text are enough to trip up the MT, which will happily prompt you to eat children when asked to translate the sentence “Let’s eat kids”. Technically accurate, but hardly the right solution. A ludicrous example? Maybe, but a human would spot the missing comma right away.
“Machine translation just follows a specific set of rules coded into the program, but it can’t interpret the social/emotional aspect of communication or follow the perhaps flawed human logic behind a sentence structure.”
— Lucy Astles, translator from Korean into English
Curious about the accuracy of Google Translate? Take a look at this post.
TL;DR 📍
• Machine translation enables fast communication in informal and professional settings
• It’s suitable for simple, low-risk content ✔️
• It struggles with nuance, tone and context ❌
• It helps speed up the work of human translators
What is machine translation really good for?
Machine translation is useful in all those situations where professional translation services aren’t an option due to time, cost or practical constraints, e.g. informal conversations between individuals, customer support chats, product reviews, social media posts, etc.
While it’s not the miraculous tool many were hoping for, it can support human translators by providing them with a first draft to work upon, speeding up that initial phase of familiarization with the source text.
Key takeaway ⭐ To sum up, machine translation effectively serves three main purposes:
• Assisting human translators in the drafting stage
• Handling low-stakes content
• Enabling communication when time or resources are limited
However, not all machine translation tools are created equal, so let’s make a distinction between basic, free-to-use tools like Google Translate and custom-trained MT systems designed for professional environments.
While generic tools work well with uncomplicated, everyday content, specialized machine translation engines are trained on the contextual terms, keywords and phrases most commonly used in specific fields like healthcare, law and finance, ensuring more accurate and effective results.
According to an in-house study by Across Systems, engines trained on specialized content and corporate language outperform generic ones by up to 40% in accuracy.
Ultimately, the choice depends on the urgency, complexity and importance of your translation needs. Check out this article about how to choose the best translation software for more information.
Machine translation for global communications: from customer support to healthcare and social media
Instant communication on a global scale would be impossible without some form of language technology — and that’s where machine translation enters the stage.
Its primary application is breaking down linguistic barriers in everyday interactions, especially in situations where hiring a professional is simply not practical.
1. Customer support — Receive instant help in your language
According to CSA Research, 75% of people are more likely to purchase from the same brand again if customer service is in their language. Communicating with support can be frustrating when there’s a language barrier, but hiring a human translator would be overkill, so it’s machine translation that bridges this gap in live chats, support tickets, FAQs and quick start guides.
2. Reviews — Understand customer feedback
When you’re interested in a product or trying to decide on a restaurant while on vacation, customer reviews are a godsend. The problem is, only a few are in your language… Machine translation of reviews on e-commerce platforms and search engines can fill the gap, giving you an idea of the pros and cons of what you’re looking at.
Lingvanex’s MT solution for e-commerce and retail, for example, helps businesses operating in global markets translate customer feedback, reviews and ratings.
2. Internal communications — Streamline collaboration
Within an organization, there are often situations where you need to communicate with colleagues from international branches. It could be updates, reminders, policy changes, internal surveys… you name it. Machine translation can be a practical solution to get your message across when style, form and structure are not as crucial as they are in public-facing communications. Microsoft’s Translator, for example, adds built-in multilingual support for internal teams.
4. Healthcare — Improve patient communication in real time
Clear communication is obviously paramount in healthcare, and machine translation systems like Mabel AI help patients and caregivers understand each other when there’s no time or budget to hire an interpreter or a translator by offering secure real-time translation and speech-to-text features.
5. Social media — Engage with global content
What spells “communication” more than social media? Machine translation enables users to engage with content they’d otherwise be excluded from due to language barriers. While some companies decide to localize their social media posts, individual users typically don’t — making machine translation the only practical option in these situations.
An example? Social media management tools like Hootsuite use MT to auto-translate posts, comments and replies.
Machine translation for business: from e-commerce to tourism, finance and marketing
In today’s global economy, the demand for product localization is increasing among businesses looking to reach new audiences. While machine translation is not a substitute for professional services in high-stakes or customer-facing materials, it can effectively support translation workflows in a variety of business scenarios, such as:
1. E-commerce — Expand the reach of your products
You’ve probably seen Amazon listings packed with clusters of seemingly random words. Not exactly pleasant to read, but you still got the gist of what the product was, right? This is one of the most common applications of machine translation, although it often lacks the human touch needed to make the content truly readable, user-friendly and trustworthy-looking.
Here’s an interesting read about Google Translate’s accuracy for Shopify stores.
2. Legal — Speed up document translation
Legal translation heavily relies on standardized terminology, so a well-trained machine translation engine should speed things up while maintaining consistency.
Be careful, though, as not every MT tool is up to the task. Free services like Google Translate simply aren’t equipped for the level of precision and confidentiality that legal content (like contracts, wills, terms and conditions and court documents) demands, and entrusting them with your sensitive documents is not the best idea. It’s much safer to choose a specialized solution for law firms and in-house legal departments, like RWS’s legal language technology.
3. Travel and hospitality — Enhance guest experience
Tourism is built on the interaction of diverse cultures and languages, and clear communication goes a long way in ensuring a positive customer experience. Machine translation helps travelers navigate booking websites and interact with local service providers. For small operators with a tight budget, it also serves as a foundation for translating hotel descriptions, travel brochures and restaurant menus, bridging language gaps where basic understanding matters more than perfect grammar, flow and style.
Apps like Waygo, for instance, allow you to translate menu items from languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
4. Financial services — Ensure precision and security
Similarly to the legal field, accuracy and confidentiality are critical in the financial industry. As even minor misinterpretations can have serious consequences, it’s essential to rely on specialized translation systems like SYSTRAN that offer precise and regulatory-compliant solutions to ensure terminological precision and protect sensitive information in transaction reports, balance sheets, income statements and audits.
5. Manuals — Make technical content easily accessible
It’s in the nature of product instructions and manuals to include simple, straightforward sentences that machine translation can handle, providing a good base for translation. Human post-editing is still necessary, however, as these documents contain technical terms and concepts that require contextual understanding and domain-specific expertise.
6. Global marketing — Localize content to reach new markets
To expand into new markets, businesses need to resonate with their audiences by localizing their marketing materials. Machine translation can help with product descriptions, advertisements and promotional content that will later be refined by professionals to ensure that the intended message is not only accurate, but also compelling and culturally relevant.
“Nobody loves a robot. If clients want to be loved and want true engagement with their end-customers, you need a human to take the pre-translated content and make it relevant to the end-customer.”
— Maria Schnell, Chief Language Officer, RWS
Machine translation for information access: from government resources to education and subtitles
Machine translation isn’t only used for direct communication or business purposes — it also plays a key role in making information accessible to the public. When budget constraints make professional translation unfeasible, MT is the way to go for promoting inclusivity and ensuring people have access to:
1. Government resources — Make public information accessible
We all know governments don’t always have the budget to professionally translate all their guidelines and announcements into the many languages spoken by their residents. Still, access to information on taxes, immigration, public health and social benefits remains crucial. Machine translation expands the reach of these resources, helping people understand the key concepts.
2. Educational content — Ensure the availability of learning resources
Education is becoming increasingly global, with countless free or low-cost resources available online… mainly in English. When professional translation services are not an option, machine translation gives people access to valuable content for their personal and professional development, such as lectures, academic papers, educational e-books and webinar transcripts.
3. Auto-generated subtitles — Improve video accessibility across languages
YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine, yet most of its content is in English. While larger channels sometimes choose to invest in professionally translated subtitles, auto-generated ones help smaller creators make their videos more accessible. This enables a much wider audience to engage with entertainment, tutorials, educational content and more, even if they don’t speak the original language.
4. Disappearing languages — Help preserve endangered languages
Machine translation also plays a role in cultural preservation. Inria Chile’s Huemul project is using it to translate Mapudungún into Spanish, with the goal of preserving and revitalizing this endangered indigenous language. The project involves the training of an AI model using texts in Mapudungún and their corresponding Spanish translation, in an attempt to bring the language into the digital era and prevent it from falling into oblivion.
How to approach machine translation moving forward
As we’ve seen, machine translation isn’t a magical solution after all. It can indeed reduce costs and accelerate timelines — just not in the way you’d expect: like any tool, it requires human direction and oversight to be truly effective.
Free, publicly available MT systems are useful for getting basic points across in informal contexts, while more sophisticated, paid versions help streamline the work of human translators.
When examining the applications of machine translation, it’s important to not get carried away. Carefully consider its strengths and weaknesses without losing sight of the ultimate goal: implementing it in a way that genuinely benefits both businesses and translators.
“Human empathy needs to be involved with jobs that require language. I view AI and technology as a way to enhance the human component of what we do. We can remove the basic things so that the highly trained and highly paid people can focus on more important, high-level activities.”
— Brigham Tomco, CEO, Emmersion
Want to get more practical? Learn more about how to make the most of automatic translation here.
