We were scared for a while but... we'll survive!
Technology is quickly advancing and accomplishing great feats, bringing machines a lot closer to replacing man each day. In the past few years, there have been countless articles and television news stories on how “machines will steal your job” and that “in the next 10 years, machines will replace teachers”. Some of this can be attributed to sensationalism and the media’s monetary gain from the click frenzy caused by such titles, but the truth is that machines are getting smarter every year.
In place of the secretary, there is now an app that will schedule your meetings, sort your mail, direct your calls, and remind you that dinner is ready in 5. When once you needed a chef to cook a gourmet dish, there is now a computerized kitchen that will stir and sauté your meal to perfection. Instead of a translator, you can upload your text to Google and have it automatically translated to the language of your choice. Or even better, you can put a little device in your ear and immediately have spoken words translated into your language.
But while this ends up being an immense cost-saver for the consumer, you run the risk of losing the accuracy that only the human brain can deliver. This is perhaps the reason why the UK government (and many other institutions) require the translation of documents to be certified. This cannot be done by a computer because there are nuances to a language that bots and software just don’t understand. If you take the French language, you will come across many phrases that translate literally to something very different to its English counterpart. For example, “carte blanche” translates literally ‘white card’ but actually means “unlimited authority”. These are “little” things that would actually cause some confusion if not translated by a real person.
For our group, certified translations are our bread and butter, and we take great pride in accurately translating documents (idioms and all), recreating the formatting and certifying that the document is, in fact, “true and accurate”. To this day we still have not had a single document returned to us, and our 5-star reviews speak for themselves. Now you tell me, can a computer beat that?
You can read more about what a certified translation actually is on our home page. Or click the link to view examples of our certified translations.