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Why a Human-In-The-Loop Remains a Must for your Corporate Projects

As automation and AI translation tools become more sophisticated and refined in the workplace, it’s tempting to use them for your corporate communications. After all, machine translation is fast, accessible, and ready to launch. But what happens when your essential projects, from branding to legal documentation and conferences, require cultural nuance, accuracy, and legal compliance? You still need a skilled, native translator for your professional needs.

When you rely heavily on AI, you expose your business to miscommunication and damage to your reputation. It’s not worth the risk. Instead, you can combine both a human expert and a quality AI translation tool. Learn more about how keeping a human in the loop with your corporate projects is a must-have, even with the best translation tools.

Human Translators Understand Nuance and Context

AI Translation Tools translator at computer - Absolute TranslationsIt’s not just complex translations that need nuance and context—even basic documents and assets need human translators. AI translation tools like Google Translate or ChatGPT fall short because they only predict language patterns and don’t understand meaning. They can be impressive for basic communication or a quick, informal draft to your internal team, but they lack context, tone and intent. A native translator can interpret more complex meaning, read between the lines, and dig into the cultural implications of the work.

If you work in a global company and you need to translate your corporate communications, what will happen with the idioms and industry jargon or nuanced phrasing in your communications? AI may do a good job at getting the word-for-word meaning, but it doesn’t take into account idiomatic language and cultural nuances. You could end up with small errors in phrasing that lead to misunderstandings and ultimately reputation damage.

Instead, you need the help of a professional translator using state-of-the-art AI tools. For example, our translators may use tools like Trados Studio or memoQ with an AI machine translation tool integrated to streamline, centralise, and manage their translation work. The results? Our clients get cheap, polished and error-free work.

You Need Human Judgment to Understand Brand Voice and Tone

Think of your corporate translations as more than a way to make sense of your documents, communications and assets, but as a reflection of your brand identity. From marketing campaigns to annual reports and press releases, AI translation tools on their own cannot convey the subtleties of your brand, especially across different languages.

When you work with Absolute Translations, you can request transcreation services that go beyond translating the word-for-word meaning but also the big picture message and context to resonate with an audience—all while keeping the brand voice intact. Our translators help translate a witty tagline that works in English but falls flat in another language or is culturally inappropriate.

Cultural Awareness Is Crucial to Your Corporate Reputation

Culture and language are fused together and what is persuasive or clever in one language can be considered offensive or confusing in others. AI translation tools don’t always catch the context, especially in areas with rapidly changing global markets. Professional translators are trained to work with both the language and cultural norms, values, and expectations of their target markets. They can localise terms, adjust phrasing for formality, and align content to the values of a specific target audience. Without cultural intelligence, your corporation is at risk of compromising its brand and revenue.

However, with the right translation tools and a combination of carefully selected native linguists, you can achieve the best of both worlds.

Our translation tool, memoQ, enables our professional translators to deliver projects efficiently, cost effectively, and with the highest quality. It not only offers AI machine translation options, but also stores the translations, reviewed by our native translators, in a database for future use. This helps our translators to keep up with large projects, whether they come in multiple file formats, with multiple revisions, or across multiple platforms. When our translators work on large projects segments, these stored translations will help them to maintain consistency and speed up the process without compromising the quality.

Accuracy and Precision Are Everything in Legal and Technical Fields

We’ve already discussed the style and context of corporate translation, but you also need to consider accuracy and precision. When it comes to legal contracts, technical training manuals, documentation, or regular filings, a single mistranslated term could put your company at risk of liabilities. You could lose contracts and the trust of your stakeholders.

The team at Absolute Translations works in over 250 languages and dialects and can delve into the intricacies of legal, medical, and financial terms and terminology. We also use a peer-reviewed process to ensure absolute accuracy and integrate changes seamlessly to produce the highest quality work possible.

Accuracy and Precision Are Everything in Legal and Technical Fields

Not all AI tools are created equally. Using a tool like ChatGPT isn’t appropriate for something as sensitive as legal work. It will even warn you at the bottom of the screen, “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.” After relying on ChatGPT for a personal injury case, New York-based lawyer Steven A. Schwartz, fellow lawyer Peter LoDuca, and law firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman were fined for submitting fake citations in a court filing.

The legal team even asked ChatGPT if the cases it was citing were real, and the AI tool responded, “Yes,” and they could be verified on various databases. Unfortunately, the lawyers failed to fact-check for themselves and their professional reputations were irreparably damaged. The lesson here is that just because AI sounds impressive and can perform research and translations quickly, not all tools are the same.

Fortunately, the right tools can help with case and practice management, like Clio or Everlaw. These cloud-based systems can assist with document review and case chronology. But when you need a translator for sensitive fields like legal, you need to include a human peer review process to ensure accuracy.

Human translators are trained to double-check, proofread, collaborate with a team, and rely on their own cultural reasoning. The team at Absolute Translations is adept at catching inconsistencies in corporate translations and goes through a rigorous quality control check to deliver a final, verified product that AI simply cannot replicate.

AI Isn’t Confidential or Holds Ethical Responsibilities

AI Translation Tools translator and paperwork - Absolute TranslationsWhen translating sensitive corporate documents—such as internal memos, M&A reports, or intellectual property—confidentiality is critical. Uploading documents to free AI translation tools introduces serious security risks. Even paid AI platforms may store or analyse the content to train their algorithms, raising ethical concerns.

Professional translators, especially those working with reputable agencies, follow strict confidentiality agreements and industry standards for data protection. Many are certified, accredited, or members of professional organisations that hold them to high ethical guidelines. You know exactly who has access to your materials—and that they’re bound to protect them.

AI Can’t Replace Real-Time Human Translators in Important Meetings

What happens if you’re at a medical consultation, negotiating a sensitive business deal, or in multilingual meetings with overlapping speech? Aside from the awkwardness of failing to communicate clearly and effectively with each other, regulated industries like medical, finance, pharmaceuticals, or insurance come with high stakes. 

Making mistakes with translations around compliance requirements can also cause critical errors and eventually lead to mistakes in official documents and paperwork. Only certified human translators can produce compliant, sworn, or notarised corporate translations.

Ready to Make a Strategic Investment in Human Translators?

AI translation tools have their place in the global market, especially more advanced, state-of-the-art technology. They can save time and prove helpful for standard use and streamlining large-scale translation projects. But relying exclusively on AI in critical industries and use cases falls short and can ultimately damage your corporate brand. Instead, blending both advanced AI and human translators brings deep expertise, accountability, cultural understanding, and emotional intelligence while honoring the importance of your  high-stakes business communication.

If you’re ready to make a strategic investment in your brand through clarity, accuracy, brand reputation, and more, we’re here to help. From document translation to transcreation and real-time services, we offer all the translation services you need. Ready to get started? Request a quote today!

The Role of Localisation in a Scale-up: The Emesent Story

Image of a drone idle on the floor - illustrating an article by Absolute Translations about the scale-up company Emesent

When a small start-up company finds a perfect combination of product quality, market fit, and internal stability, they can begin to mature. At this point, they can become what’s called a “scale-up”: a company with high revenue, lots of raised capital, and, crucially, international ambitions.

 

When a business hits this level early and accelerates quickly, it’s known as “hypergrowth”, which is both a chaotic and very exciting period for a scale-up where things are happening fast and hurdles are everywhere. One of the biggest hurdles to adapting to those changes and expanding globally are new barriers of culture and language.
One of our favourite clients, Emesent, can be identified as a “scale-up”. 
Absolute Translations’ Veerle Vanderplasschen sat down with Kym Morley, who looks after Emesent’s content and communications, to discuss the challenges of hypergrowth and how Emesent has overcome them.

Veerle:

Thanks for taking the time to chat. To kick things off, tell us a little about who Emesent are, what you do, and where you come from?

Kym:

We’re happy to. Emesent is a world leader in drone autonomy, LiDAR mapping, and data analytics. We were founded in 2018 by Dr Stefan Hrabar and Dr Farid Kendoul, after they spent over 10 years developing this technology as part of CSIRO’s Robotics and Autonomous Systems group, Data61.

Our flagship product, Hovermap, has made significant impacts in the mining, infrastructure, survey, and mapping industries by allowing users to capture high quality point clouds quickly and easily, whether that’s with a walking scan, or mounting Hovermap to a compatible drone for autonomous flight.

Veerle:

A really unique story, turning 10 years of research into one of Australia’s fastest growing start-ups. Tell us about that growth.

Kym:

We started with seven employees, and in four years we’ve grown to over 150, which has been a huge jump. We recently opened offices in the UK and USA as part of our global expansion and have over 40 resellers worldwide.

And earlier this year, Emesent closed an oversubscribed fundraise. We intend to use those funds to double our engineering department, particularly in the area of data analytics, as well as build a new manufacturing, calibration, and testing facility in Brisbane to increase production to meet demand.

Growing to this size at this speed is rare in the startup world, with approximately 90% of businesses closing within their first three years of operation.

Emesent are being somewhat modest above: that oversubscribed fundraise was for $32 million — for reference, the median fundraising round nets a startup around $1 million. This is a clear indicator of the confidence that global investors have in Emesent’s potential.

Veerle:

Was going global the plan from day one?

Kym:

Absolutely. The potential benefits of Hovermap are universal and we wanted to share those with the world from day one.

Veerle:

So how did you approach going global?

Kym:

We’re fortunate to have many staff with global corporation experience, and we rely on their expertise to implement the global approach.

We also have a reseller network over 30 countries, and they provide local expertise to our customers in the region.

Those resellers aren’t just your average suppliers and storefronts either — they’re some of the world’s forerunners in the mining, surveying, infrastructure, and drone technology industries, including Mirukuru Co in Japan, Daoyun Tech in China, and Dwyka Mining Services in South Africa.

Veerle:

What are some of the lessons you’ve learned – that you can share – from going global?

Kym:

Scaling up during the COVID pandemic presented us with some unique hurdles. Not being able to get out and visit clients and resellers in person has meant that having accurately translated documents was more important than ever. Having accurate, reliable translations of documentation is imperative. It makes your customers feel seen and appreciated when you can provide them documentation in their own language.

Veerle:

Let’s talk about those translation requirements. You’re having all your client-facing content, including your website and your documentation, localised into eight languages. Why did you choose to be so comprehensive, rather than translate as-needed?

Kym:

We want to help customers all over the world with mapping in inaccessible areas, and we believe it is important to speak to them in their language wherever possible to make things easier for them. Our head of marketing, Cecile, quotes Nelson Mandela: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.”

There are many countries in our key target markets where English isn’t commonly understood. We want to make sure that our current and potential customers are able to access the information they need to use our products effectively.

Veerle:

What would you tell other companies about the importance of translating/localising content?

Kym:

Investing in localising your marketing content will give you a competitive advantage. Don’t rely on Google Translate. Most people wouldn’t buy from a website with poor English so why would we think it’s ok to have poorly translated content?

Veerle:

Absolutely. Your content is your brand and it is essential to have the right localisation strategy.

What’s next for Emesent? More growth? New countries?

Kym:

We are looking to double our number of resellers this year, so undoubtedly we’ll be reaching new locations and looking for more translations.

We’re also working through our large quantity of English collateral, so that we can provide any of our material to our customers in their own language.

Veerle:

Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you’d like to add?

Kym:

I’d like to add that we’re very satisfied with the work that Absolute Translations have been doing for us. The team at Absolute Translations are always ready to help, whatever our request.

Specifically, they have been an absolute God-send with our website translation. They manage the software and all updates, which takes a lot of pressure off our small team.

Emesent’s positive note means the world to us here at Absolute Translations after working hard alongside them during their impressive growth these past years.

It’s exciting to be on this journey with them as they begin to need more localisation services. We love to see our partners succeed, and we stand ready to offer them the tools they need to do so at any scale.

4 Reasons Why Machine Translation Won’t Beat Human Translation – Yet

Image of a woman with liine of codes projected onto - illustration for an article on translation by machines and humans on the Absolute Translations website.

If you work in an industry that either employs or provides products and services to individuals speaking different languages, you’ll know that translation is an essential service in keeping your organisation running smoothly. You’re not alone — job opportunities in the localisation industry have grown 46 percent in the last decade. But where so many companies fall short is in how they conduct their translations. 

From Google Translate to the most sophisticated machine translation software, it has never been quicker or easier to get a document translated. But while these tools can be great for quickly getting a simple idea across, where they fail mostly is in intuitive, complex communications. Luckily, humans are excellent translators — better than any machine or AI (Artificial Intelligence) on the market. Here’s why.

Comprehension is key

If you’re multilingual to any degree, you’ve likely spent some time messing about with Google Translate and chuckling when you find a mistranslation. Any word or phrase with multiple meanings (in jargon, we call this “polysemous”) can really stump machine translators, as their programming forces them to take the words individually and present the most direct and linear translation possible. Additionally, some words in Language A may have direct translations in Language B that just aren’t used in everyday language. Here’s an example using some boilerplate legal English, translated to Spanish:

Capture of a Google Translate translation from English to Spanish, on the Absolute Translations website

Any Spanish reader would tell you that while this makes sense, it’s not really correct. This is the general impression that quick Google translations give: just a bit… weird. In linguistic jargon we call this “unidiomatic”. In more complex communications, like marketing or advertising, pieces that boast linguistic expressions or plays on words,  a Google translation will hardly ever give you a satisfactory result. Any complex communication targeting any specific audience will still require a human translator who understands the intricacies of the language, culture and society of that audience to successfully translate that communication and achieve the same result.

 

Culture and society dictate

Machine translation largely depends on programmers, not translators, to design the systems by which it operates. As a result, these systems often lack understanding of context and cultural nuance within a document or conversation. Humans, on the other hand, are living beings, they learn, they evolve and they grow, just like societies and their languages learn, evolve and grow.

Humans are able to take in the totality of a piece of text and build their translation with that in mind, rather than working linearly like a machine does. 

Also cultural consideration can be important when dealing with international businesses, and the quality, adequacy and appropriateness of a translation can make or break a deal. Human translators are able to effectively translate slang, idioms, tone, style, register, and other cultural aspects that might otherwise cause confusion or offence if translated literally or word-for-word. 

Similarly, languages are always evolving, especially amongst younger age groups, and highly trained translators will know and be accustomed to always double-checking the usage of certain words within their cultural context and use them appropriately in their translation work. 

Going one step further, if we consider the translation of Health & Safety guidelines or protocols the end result must be 100% accurate in order not to put lives at risk. Using AI for that purpose would be risky business, and the human translator using his expert knowledge will continue to play a key role – for quite some time yet. 

 

Creativity inspires

Creativity and uniqueness are essential in conveying your brand messages to your audience. A machine will always be a machine, and during its mechanical translation process  it will likely strip that uniqueness away, leading to bland and uniform translations that won’t capture the new  audience the way the original message did. 

That is where “transcreation” comes into play. Transcreation is a combination of ‘translation’ and ‘creation’, and this form of translation taps into the translator’s creativity, where, rather than a translator, his role is to be a writer, ensuring that the copy he is re-creating, is uniquely suited to the new audience, the same way the original copy was uniquely suited to the original audience. 

With the right amount of creativity, human translators will keep this monopoly in translation, and we’ll be safe – for some time yet.

 

A Code of Ethics binds

Every professional translator is a member of a professional association and bound by its rules. For instance, in Australia, members of the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT) are bound by the following code:

  • respect their clients’ rights to privacy and confidentiality
  • decline to undertake work beyond their competence or accreditation levels
  • take responsibility for the work of people under their supervision
  • decline to mix promotional activity for clients with interpreting or translation work
  • guard against misuse of inside information for personal gain
  • guard against encroaching on the work of co-members
  • maintain professional detachment, impartiality and objectivity
  • refer to arbitration by the National Council of any dispute with other members and to accept the Council decision as binding.

This implies that professional translators are bound by a professional code and will not share any company information without the express permission of the owner of that information.

Professional translators can also sign confidentiality agreements which adds an extra layer of security. Machines unfortunately don’t offer this level of protection of information. In fact, if you agree to Google Translate’s terms and conditions (which you do implicitly whenever using the service), you are giving Google the right to “use, host, store, reproduce, modify, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute content.” This is obviously unacceptable in many fields — should sensitive information like bank details, personal addresses, proprietary methods, or server information become public, it could be devastating to a company and its employees. Similarly, if Google were to glimpse a particularly innovative product that you’ve developed, and if it were to reproduce the same product and release it ahead of yours, you’d have no legal recourse, as you agreed to their terms.

If nothing else, this should be the one argument that convinces organisations to use a professional human translator over a machine even when it comes to just ‘getting the gist’ of what a document says. Running a document through Google is essentially passing up on its privacy and confidentiality. So next time you need to quickly translate a few documents, stop and think: is the speed really worth the risk?

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