The Pros and Cons of Translation Crowdsourcing

Individuals and businesses are always trying to find ways to cut the cost of translation and wondering whether there is an easier way of getting their translations done effectively enough. When professional translation services seem too expensive and cheaper methods like machine translation do not provide the quality that is needed, then a middle ground translation method like crowdsourcing may be worth considering. So what are the pros and cons of crowdsourcing and why has it become such a popular translation choice over the last few years?

To deal with the negative factors first, these are the types of situation for which crowdsourcing is not good enough:

•  Document translation for official purposes, like immigration, citizenship, employment, education applications. In Australia, most of this sort of translation makes it mandatory to use a NAATI translation service. In fact, most professional translation services in Sydney or any other large Australian city are NAATI accredited, so there is no difficulty in finding an appropriate translator.

•  Where the translation may not be in the category above, but may be technical in nature such as a medical or scientific document or be full of legal terms. For this sort of translation service, you need to pay for professional translation services, preferably with translators who have specific experience with the sort of technical translation you need.

• When consistency or accuracy of translation is particularly important. This is when it makes sense to pay out for professional translation services, perhaps one that uses a computer aided translation (CAT) tool which “remembers” particular words and phrases and ensures that the same words are translated the same way.

Crowdsourcing definitely has some advantages, too. Here are some of them:

• a) It beats using a professional translator cost wise significantly, so for any translation work you want doing which doesn’t fit into one of the categories just mentioned above, then crowdsourcing may be a suitable option.

•  When content has been created by the user, like product reviews or social media content. Crowdsourcing uses real human translation so is infinitely better than machine translation at colloquial expressions and idiomatic speech. At the same time, the benefits of translation may not justify the expense of professional translation.

• For short jobs where translation consistency is not so important, crowdsourcing can provide a translator at short notice and at a very reasonable cost.

Indigenous Communities Disadvantaged by Legal Translation Deficiency

A project initiated by a researcher at Darwin’s Charles Darwin University is intended to try and reduce the amount of incarceration experienced by the indigenous community in Northern Australia. The researcher, Dr Samantha Disbray, has identified deficiencies in the translation of legal language as being one of the contributors to misunderstanding between law enforcers and Aboriginal communities.

The linguist’s project is the Language and Law Project and is being funded to the tune of $A28,000 by the Law Society Public Purposes Trust and hopes to focus on three communities in particular in Central Australia and help them to understand legal terms in English as well as translate them better in their own languages. The project may help NAATI translators cope with the all important translation of interactions within the communities, police stations and courtrooms that can end up in tragedy when translations get lost in misunderstanding.

Examples of the way legal terms can lead to misunderstanding include the way the word “guilty” is translated into Warumungu and Wumpurrarni, just to take two indigenous languages in the target area. When the word is translated it may simply mean “remorse” when the legal meaning in its English sense implies culpability for a crime. The project will attempt to explain what terms like these mean even if there is no exact word for them in the communities’ own languages.

Another word that often confuses indigenous people who are not fully bilingual themselves is the word “kill”. There is no confusion amongst native English speakers themselves, but when translated, indigenous people may believe that it means “hit” or beat” instead – vastly different meanings. It also means that when Aboriginal people communicate with police or lawyers and use the word “kill”, they may actually mean “using violence of some sort”.

It is easy to see how when translation service providers in Adelaide or other city in a state or territory where there is a significant indigenous community do not appreciate the way translation has become “lost” that individuals can end up being incarcerated needlessly, a situation which has all too often in the past led to tragedies such as suicide.

Because of the specificity of the different Aboriginal languages other linguists have been engaged by the project to look into legal translation in Pitjantjatjara and Alyawarra, two more languages widely spoken in the Central Australian region.