Green Crescent offers only high-quality human translation in concert with various language memory tools when appropriate. We do not utilize free online translators or similar language conversion software in our work.

What is translation software?

Translation software is quite simply software that translates from one language to another using dictionaries of stock words and phrases and programmed responses to issues of grammar. The most common are between English and another language, but they can be created to translate between any language pair. Most recently, companies such as Google have taken translation software to the next level using complex algorithms to produce more sophisticated results by combining massive qualities of translation data as well as "a human touch" by incorporating the suggestions of users. You can see this feature by installing the Google Toolbar and enabling their translation feature.

The better free online translators and translation tools include:

Google's Language Tools: http://www.google.com/language_tools
Yahoo's Bablefish: http://babelfish.yahoo.com/

It's no coincidence that the largest IT companies are coming to dominate the free online translator market as the amount of data required to produce even minimally reasonable results is immense.

Does software produce good results?

While just a few years ago the answer would have been clearly been no, translation professionals at Green Crescent and other firms have been impressed by the results achieved by Google and other firms in the area of language translation. While the results are still poor when compared to human translation, we are impressed with what their algorithms have achieved given the infinite nuance of human language - and they are sure to only get better as their data pool grows and algos are further refined.

Still, while there are many great automated translators available, and they can be helpful from time to time, particularly if you are already familiar with the target language, you should use them with caution and never expect a high quality translation, especially when translating pieces of text longer than a few words.

To illustrate our point, the following is the first few lines from a Spanish translation of Henry Miller's famous work, Tropic of Cancer: "Vivo en la Villa Borghese. No hay ni pizca de suciedad en ninguna parte, ni una silla fuera de su lugar. Aquí estamos todos solos y muertos. Anoche Boris descubrió que tenía piojos. Tuve que afeitarle los sobacos y ni siquiera así se le paso el picor. ¿Cómo puede uno coger piojos en un lugar tan bello como éste? Pero no importa. Puede que no hubiéramos llegado nunca a conocernos tan íntimamente, Boris y yo, si no hubiese sido por los piojos."

This is how the translation should read in English: "I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere or a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead. Last night Boris discovered that he was lousy. I had to shave his armpits and even then the itching did not stop. How can one get lousy in a beautiful place like this? But no matter. We might never have known each other so intimately, Boris and I, had it not been for the lice."

Results from Google's Language Tools: "I live in the Villa Borghese. There is no hint of dirt anywhere, nor a chair outside his place. Here we are all alone and dead. Last night Boris discovered that he had lice. I had to shave the sobacos and even as the itchy him step. How can one pick lice in a place as beautiful as this one? But no matter. Perhaps we would not have ever come to know so intimately, Boris and I, had it not been for lice."

Results from Yahoo's Bablefish: "Alive in Villa Borghese. There is neither no dirt pinch nowhere, nor a chair outside its place. Here we are all single and dead ones. Last night Boris discovered that it had lice. I had to not even shave the armpits and therefore him to him step the picor. How can one take lice in a as beautiful place as this one? But it does not matter. Perhaps I so intimately would have gotten never to know us, Boris and, if she had not been by the lice."

This excercise was performed on August 17th, 2008.

If you find yourself in doubt about the quality of a software translation program, simply cut and paste a piece of foreign language text into the program and evaluate the outcome in English. The output will be comparable in a foreign language for a given English text.