Christian Dubbing Studio

MACHINE TRANSLATIONS VERSUS HUMAN TRANSLATORS

I've had ministries ask me if we could cut translations costs by using machine translations. Some have said that the machine translation is being constantly improved, and may be one should use human translators as just post-editors. This approach they felt was quick, efficient and most importantly, a much cheaper way to get the translations.

If one was to get an idea of the original text, I personally feel it is okay...but if the translation is for lip sync or voice over recording.... My response is a resounding NO!

1. While translating for dubbing, we have to first understand that it is for an audio-for-video medium, and not for print.

2. Translations need to capture the mood, tone and content very skillfully. Machine Translations could at the most provide expressions consisting of the most probable equivalent phrases, as computed by analysis of an astronomically large set of paired sentences trawled from the web.

3. Machine Translation does not follow the natural flow of a language, it has a tendency to provide literal translations of words only combined within a sentence.
While doing a test, I personally saw word order in a sentence ending up being incorrect. Reason is because the Machine Translation cannot stylistically form the sentence nor can it apply any of syntactical, morphological, phonological rules...that are critical to make a sentence flow naturally. 

Christian content integrity ought to be maintained at all costs. At Christian Dubbing Studio, we ensure that all translations are carefully crafted by our translators, checked by our supervisors and finally recorded by voice actors who match on-screen characters.