Typically, translations of paragraphs are more accurate than translations of sentences. Some other considerations: with translations, context is important. The translations of legal texts by Wordlingo and Reverso were useless. The services that rely on the Paralink engine came in fourth position, but needed more corrections. (Google Translate offers alternative translations, and typically, one of those will have a correct translation if the suggested translation is not accurate). All three did well in the one way translations, as well as in the back and forth. They are followed by Google Translate and Bing in a shared second position. Their texts needed the least interventions, and score best on grammar and style. In the tests we ran, DeepL ended as the best service. The translations by the best services offer texts that are understandable / readable but that still contain multiple grammar and style errors, and therefore still need human revision. The first observation is that none of these services offer the same quality as a human translator does. In another example “out of sight, out of mind” came back as “invisible insanity.”) In a first example “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” came back as “the wine was alright, but the meat had gone off”. (There are some humorous but unconfirmed stories of the early days of machine translations. We also did some back and forth test, where you submit a text in one language to be translated in another, and then have that result translated back to the original language. These were not meant as a scientific experiment, but just as a field test where we took some legal texts, and had them translated from English to Dutch and vice versa. So, are they any good, and how do they compare to each other? We ran some practical tests. The Online Translator: m./ The Online Translator offers translations between 19 languages. Reverso: Reverso can translate texts between 13 different languages. WorldLingo: WordLingo offers translations between 15 languages, and is limited to texts of 500 words per submission. At present, however, the free version is not available. SDL: The SDL translator usually is offered in a free version, as well as a paid version. Texts between, e.g., Dutch and English are not done by Paralink itself. If your needs do not match one of the available pairs, your text is submitted automatically to Google Translate and/or Bing. Paralink offers translations between 55 different languages, but does not do all of them itself: it works with translation pairs it developed itself. Paralink: / The Paralink translator is free, and in theory there is no limit to the amount of text you can translate. It does offer the option to upload and translate documents. DeepL can translate only between seven languages. There is a limit to the free service, but, at present, it is not clear what that limit is. DeepL offers a free service as well as a subscription service, where you pay a monthly fee, and are allowed up to 1 million characters per month. It is a German translation service, made by the people who created Linguee. If you are using Office 365, then the option to select a text, right-click on it, and have it translated is directly available in Word.ĭeepL: DeepL stands for Deep Learning. Also worth noting is that you probably have direct access to the Bing Translator from within Microsoft Word. The Bing Translator does not allow to submit entire documents, but it is possible to use a URL. (Though I doubt that, as a lawyer, you’ll ever need that one). At present, it can translate between 65 different languages, including Klingon. (If your texts are larger, you’ll have to split them up). It allows you to translate entire documents, as well as web pages.īing: The Bing Translator is free, but limited to texts of maximum 5000 characters at a time. It can translate texts between 103 different languages, which is far more than any of the other services. Google Translate: / Google Translate is completely free. Some of the services can automatically detect the language of the original text, and all of them allow you to choose the language of the original text. For all of them, you have to choose the language the text has to be translated to. Some offer the option to upload a document, or to use a web address of a web page that you would like to be translated. How does it work? Most of the available services use a form, where you can enter some text that has to be translated. But are they any good when it comes to legal texts? In this article, we’ll have a closer look at the most popular free and instant online translation services. Fortunately, there are online translation services available that can give you an almost instant translation, and several of those are free. As a lawyer, and especially as a lawyer within the EU, you often need to work with documents in more than one language.
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