Have you ever dreamt that your website or app is somehow magically translated to any language, so people from any country see the texts in their native language and don’t even guess that this website is not local? Yeah, it sounds like magic. But it’s not — it’s called translation API.
Even though there is a trend for machine translation in various regions, like the Asia-Pacific region, and the entire global machine translation market is expected to have an annual growth rate of 19% until 2024, human translation will always be of better quality.
API helps businesses to deliver multilingual content with minimal resources involved. Just imagine you have an eCommerce website with hundreds of reviews in English. But now you want to enter the Chinese market. The best option is to incorporate human translation API into your project and make it possible for foreign users to read the information as if it’s local and native.
But why exactly is human translation better than machine translation? Yes, machine translation is fast and requires fewer resources. However, only humans can get the entire context, and human translation is still the best in terms of quality, even though AI is breathing down human’s necks.
That’s why human translation still seems to be the best in the localization world. And API helps to make human translation faster and more available for even small businesses.
But let’s start from the beginning — what is an API? How does it work, and how to choose an API that will satisfy all your needs? Let’s see what we have in this translation tech world.
What Is an API?
In general, API stands for Application Programming Interface. It is needed to make two software ‘talk’ to each other. It enables data transmission between them. Thus, using the API, a programmer can quickly create a program that allows transferring information from one application to another for processing it there. And then return the final result to the original application.
How Does the Translation API Work?
Translation API is just one example of APIs in the tech world. The basic principle of translation API work is that it transfers the text from one program to another to translate it into another language there and return the translation.
Usually, if you’re localizing the content for a website, you need to write tons of emails or have hundreds of messages in translation management systems. However, the translation API makes this process automated. The CMS, where you store your content, calls the translation system, and translation orders are placed directly to the servers of the localization agency. Then, when they are translated, they are delivered back to your servers automatically.
Today, machine translation API is not rocket science. The next level for translating your projects is human translation API.
What Is Human Translation API?
As its name says, human translation API involves professional translators and real people to translate your text. So, your project’s localization quality increases as only humans can get humans (but not always for 100%). No offense to smart and powerful AI!
The human translation API workflow is the following:
- You send an order to a translation agency via API
- Your order is placed in a queue
- A translator localizes your content
- A translation is sent bachttps://i.ibb.co/c2rGwyq/What-Is-Human-Translation-API.pngk to your server while the localizer finishes the work
Who Needs Translation API
This localization tool might be useful for many businesses as it makes the localization process smooth and fast. Translation API can assist with many localization tasks, so you should consider implementing it if you’re developing any of these:
- e-shops going for an international audience
- corporate websites and portals created for the international market
- websites for booking hotels, restaurants, air, train, and bus tickets
- job-finding websites, or any other aggregators
- educational web resources with multilingual materials
- electronic document management systems created for several countries
- mobile games and apps
Human translation APIs make your texts look more native to a foreign audience. API makes it possible to enter new markets with zero hassle.
With the API, businesses don’t need to think about how you provide them the localized content. They need to insert the source text, define the context, choose target languages, and get the final result (which happens automatically).
Translation API vs. Human Translation API
Machine translation API is more widespread as it’s cheaper and faster. However, the quality of the texts translated by AI is not the best and is far from perfect. Just try to translate any complex and unique text with the machine, and you’ll become convinced of this.
So, if you have big analytical texts, like news websites, it will be difficult to translate them using the translation API, as the quality of the final text will be very lame.
Human translation improves the quality of the localized content. Thus, if you have some problematic technical documentation or allegorical texts that are tough to understand, even for humans sometimes, it’s better to choose a human translation API.
Machine translation is fine when you need to convey the general idea and don’t need to think a lot about the style of the text. There are a number of tasks where the quality of translation is not so significant. For example, when reading reviews about hotels, you do not pay a lot of attention to text style mistakes or language constructions. The main thing is to understand the general meaning, and translation APIs cope with this every year better and better.
By the way, even such a big product as TripAdvisor uses machine translation API technology to localize the reviews from its users, so anyone coming, let’s say, to a restaurant in Italy, can read the reviews left by tourists all over the world in different languages.
However, a human translation API will be a better option if you have huge analytical texts or need to transcreate your brand messages for different languages.
Final Thoughts
Globalization has become the sole authority of today’s world. Fortunately, the tech world and its innovations help us adapt to this big world faster. Human translation API can make your business processes more effective, so why not use it and enjoy its tech benefits?
Incorporating translation API can be a game-changer for you as you will get access to the new foreign markets almost in no time.