Translation in Customer Service
Someone a couple of weeks back asked for recommendations for a translate engine to use in Customer Service.
I looked at this a while ago and came to a boring conclusion.
Use the big guys. In order, I’d suggest;
- Microsoft
- Amazon
And based on the fact that Amazon is using Google Translate to translate the online conference I’m on today, I’d suggest Google.
Why?
Well, first, why those 3? There are others, but those 3 will always be the best or close. And they’re all the same price. And the integration is near trivial for all of them. And most of the other providers will go bust. So suck it up and use one of the big ones.
There are a few companies (related to universities, mostly) that claim to have “better” translations. Maybe, but it’s a pain to check on the validity of a claim for “better” in mass translations and they’ll never have performance as good and they won’t be able to compete on price.
Then, why Google? Simple. Because they process HUGE volumes. And will continue to do so. And volume is good at improving translations and at keeping them cheap.
We used Google Translate inside Google customer operations departments years ago and it gave perfectly acceptable translations once we stopped using idiomatic language and got used to writing with “subject-object-verb” grammatically correct language. And simple short sentences.
So, a boring recommendation.
