Human Translation versus Google Translate for Ecommerce Products

[bjs2010]

Hi all,

We want to put our products on our ecommerce site into another language.

I have always been under the impression that running text through Google Translate is a no no, not only for the user experience, but also it is a Google tool and I am assuming that Google would notice that it is not translated by a human. I don't know if it would incur a penalty as such but it most likely would not be favoured as a human translation

Can anyone confirm their experience or impression on this?

Thanks!

[Antony_Towle]

BJS,

We are a UK company but have different websites for Germany and Spain,

Whilst waiting for translations from our different offices in the past i had tried speed things up and get by with using Google translate for smaller scale text, title tags, descriptions etc, even this has not worked out, once that is fluent in the language reads through the text, they have told me that it usually makes no sense, Google translate doesn't seem to be getting even simple sentences structures right in my experience particularly in German,

I Would highly recommend biting the bullet and paying for translations if it is an important campaign, the quality of your text content would just not be up to scratch,

Just my experience, Hope it helps a little

James

[CommT]

I don't know about whether Google would know or not, but your human visitors probably will notice! Computerised translators such as Google Translate are great for translating little phrases when you're on holiday, but I don't think they can compete with using an actual human being. Language has so many nuances, which a human can understand, but a machine can't.

Years ago the BBC Radio 1 breakfast show used to do a competition where you had to work out what the original phrase was that had been translated into another language and then translated back into English. They didn't use Google Translate (I don't think it existed then!) but changed the language settings on a mobile phone (If I remember rightly). The difference between the original phrase and the final phrase was usually pretty funny (hence the competition).

If I was you, I wouldn't want people in other countries laughing at my product descriptions because of a stupid machine.

[ProductPearson]

You can use a service such as Babelverse for cost-effective human translation if you do decide to go down that route.

[TommyTan]

Hi,

I'm not sure whether Google will know if it's Google translated but the golden rule is usually be as humanly as possible.  Do everything for human eyes; therefore, i would suggest translating your text by a human.  By using Google Translate, it might not make sense to your customers and sometimes a word might have 2 or 3 different meaning depending on the context; therefore, a "local" human translator would be the best bet since they'll be aware of any local interpretation and etc.

Regarding to Penalty, i don't think Google will penalize you for using Google Translate, but if your translations don't make sense, you will definitely get a lot of bounce rate which will affect traffic and thus affect your SEO work.  I guess that's a penalty.

My 2 cents

[ProductPearson]

Here is the relevant Matt Cutts announcement about it:

http://www.webpronews.com/google-duplicate-content-2011-12

[SwimsuitsDirect.com]

Google translate won't always get the syntax human translation are always better.

[DanielFreedman]

No, no, no....

A thousand times No....

......to Google Translate.

See my YouMoz Blog post here.

[bjs2010]

Thank you everyone for providing your feedback and opinions. As suspected we will be heading down the most user friendly but most expensive way forward... human translation. Tx.

[fmorenop]

But beware some translation services based on automated systems that generate content 'almost duplicated', no matter the cost of the company that is hired, but the quality of the result and that these translations incorporating 'an extra' more human.