Dear Reader,

How hard is it to choose the best option among the various tools available?

In today’s fast-paced world, many individuals and businesses chose to turn to online translating services, thinking that they save time and money. While there are some advantages to using machine translation - such as instant results, and oftentimes cheap or free translation - there are also substantial disadvantages. Some of the obvious disadvantages of machine translation are misspelled words that sometimes come out the same way they were entered, a process that programmers call GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out), as well as occasional grammatical errors occurring from a computer’s inability to judge a piece of text according to its context.

There is, however, another hidden disadvantage of automated translation services that can potentially be quite dangerous. In an article entitled “Machine translation and data security”, Jörg Porsiel raises the issue of confidentiality and data security. Mr. Porisel explains that for text to be translated online, data must be first uploaded to a server, where it is translated. Then, a separate file is created and sent back to the user. There is no way of verifying who can gain access to those servers and what will happen to the information. Furthermore, an entire personal profile can be created using critical information such as from where the document was uploaded and information can be harvested even from the uploaded documents themselves.

The Moscow Times reported that data on some online purchases - names, credit card information, etc. -  was recently leaked to search engines.  This happened right after Russian mobile phone provider MobiFon leaked customer SMS messages - names, phone numbers, entire text contents, and even customer billing information - to search engines.  This raises a serious question on internet data security, and online machine translations could be exposed to the same risk of information leaking.

There are many ways to go about translating a document. While in some cases a mere automated, online translation is sufficient, other times it is better to have a trained human eye behind the translation process, whilst in most cases it is best to have a team of people that you know you can rely upon. Here at ABC Language Solutions, we will make sure that your documents are properly handled according to their particular context and purpose and we can guarantee the security of your documents and a satisfying final product.

CASE STUDY
Interpreting in Calgary done at very short notice

When ASAP is not fast enough, we offer quick, reliable solutions.

Client: Canadian Leading Provider of Clean Energy Solutions working in close partnership with a major Russian Engineering company.
Challenge: To provide Russian - English interpreter in Calgary within 2 hours from the request - at which time the client was already on a plane.
ABC Solution: Our client, for whom we have been providing translation and interpreting services over the past 2 years and who has been very satisfied with the quality of our work, asked us to provide an interpreter for several negotiations they were conducting in Calgary. Due to the very short notice, and because all local interpreters were involved in other arrangements, ABC Language Solutions managed to assist in the negotiations that took place between company leaders by sending our in house interpreter from Vancouver to Calgary. Our professional management team supervised the whole process, assisted with over-the-phone interpreting while the interpreter was still on the plane, and successfully completed the whole project. After the end of the project, ABC Language Solutions continued to offer support to the client by interpreting a follow-up conference call. ABC Language Solutions continues to work with this client providing fast and high quality translation and interpretation services.