Pros and Cons of using Google Translate vs Custom Translation

Are you trying to decide what avenue you should take on how you need to translate your site? It’s a common question we are asked from our large players who’s sites need to be in multiple countries. Some of our digital agency customers use Google Translate while some create a custom translated site. There is no one good answer on which translation option is best for your business, but we broke down the Pros and Cons of each. This will make it easier to decide which option will match your business the best.

Google Translate Pros

Google Translate is a pretty awesome tool and comes with a wide variety of benefits. Below are some of my favorite and main benefits of using the tool.

• It’s easy to add to the website.
• It’s free!
• There are 107 languages offered to you.
• You can add it in the header on every page or you can add it to just a single page.
• The user can easily access it on your site.

Google Translate Cons

While there are a bunch of pros to using Google Translate there are also a handful of Cons.

• This isn’t an exact translation, despite it being an easy fix it won’t be 100%
• The translation language varies from language to language
• The translation quality varies from page to page and even site to site
• There is no quality control

Google Translate has some great pros but it does come with a handful of cons. Ensure you review the list carefully before you decide to use it.

Professional Translation Pros

Despite me enjoying Google Translate as a quick fix, I do not think it works on every site for every method. Each business should optimize the right translation. Here are the pros of a professional translation:

• They’ll interpret the content properly
• The quality control will be on point. You won’t have to worry about grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and the difference of translations from page to page
• The transcreation will be correct. Transcreation is a way of making the text more accessible to the audience by reflecting their culture.
• Multiple language pairs on one site and page.

Professional Translation Cons

• It costs you. This isn’t a free fix and the price varies depending on the site and the page.
• It’ll be a longer turnaround time. Professionals are going in and working with you to translate your pages, it isn’t an instant fix. Is it more accurate,? Yes, 100%.

Google translate is great if you mainly work in one country and you need a quick fix for another site. Professional translation is better for multi-sites where many users come to the sites every day for that corporation. Just remember if you have any questions about which option to use don’t hesitate to contact us.