Stepes: Can Human Translation be as Efficient as Machine Translation?

In the modern world, there are few people who have never required the use of translation services. Whether on vacation, travelling for work, or communicating internationally for business there are now so many situations where you might find yourself in need of a translator. No time for human translation services? Never fear. Thankfully, we live in a world of the wonderful technology that Stepes offers and is here to help.

There are now many free online translation platforms, many of which offer almost instant responses. With such convenient services what more could you need? Well, if ever you’ve used an online service to really communicate with someone in their own language, there’s a good chance that you’ve made them laugh, or at least ran into a few problems.

The reason for this is that free services rely on machine translation. While machine translation services are cost effective and convenient, the results are often incorrect. This is due to the fact that machine translation services often use “one-to-one translations” or literal translations of each word, instead of translating a whole sentence or paragraph. This method ignores the context of different phrases, which causes issues when translating more idiomatic language. So what are the alternatives?

The biggest alternative is human translation, which has traditionally provided much higher quality translations at the price of being much less efficient. They lack in efficiency because first you need to find a translator or translation service, then negotiate prices, then send a sample, and so on and so on. This method is just not suitable for many situations. So ideally, the perfect solution would have the efficiency of machine translation combined with the quality of human translation… which is exactly what new app Stepes allows you to have.

Stepes is the world’s first chat-based, mobile translation platform powered by human translation. You simply submit your material to be translated using an instant-messaging like interface and Stepes instantly connects your material with a human translator. The human linguist will promptly use their deep understanding of the intricacies of language and cultural expertise to transform your submission into the language you need with total accuracy. Within minutes you’ll receive what you need, satisfied in the knowledge that your translation is 100% perfect.

Stepes is free to download and with prices starting from ten cents per word, you can quickly get an expert translation of the entire Gettysburg Address for less than the cost of dinner!

As technology continues to improve, it is likely that more free translation services will appear. These options may seem tempting, but remember to check whether they rely on human or machine-based translation. If you want the best results, stick to human-based translation services such as Stepes. As always, it’s important to remember that you get what you pay for.

Written by John Wawrose Technical Writer at CSOFT International

Learn more about CSOFT’s translation services here.