​Is AI Ready to Translate Financial News

When most people think of financial news, they equivalate it to the business sections of the newspaper: economy, stocks investing, money, personal finance, etc... To industry insiders, financial news includes a much broader range of content such as credit markets, funds, collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), fixed income research, private equity & venture capital activities, merger & acquisitions (M&A), equity capital markets (ECM), and industry specific financing & trading news.

If you have read our other post on equity research reports, you are likely aware AI translation is certainly ready for translating equity research reports. For financial news, however, the answer is less clear. It depends on the news (content) itself, demand for the content, and also the audience. Lets go through some of these factors in more detail:

Audience

Size and appetite of an audience are typically reflected in the translation market. If the demand for the translated content is high, we can expect it to be translated regardless of costs and labor. In the case of financial news, the size of the audience varies widely according to the content. For example, we can expect much larger audiences for equity capital markets vs. the news of a niche industry. Though, one thing that is consistent, is financial news audiences all have appetite for content due to the nature of the industry: this new content helps financiers do their job -generate returns. Following from that rationale, in the case of AI translation, any significant enough content is usually already translated (whether manually by humans or AI). The interesting financial news are those where translation weren't previously necessary but are now considerable because the costs and resources to translate have lowered.

Time Sensitivity

Some important financial news are not translated in full due to time and costs constraints, translators are instead hired to summarize longer articles in another language. Any translation processes falling into such category are usually candidates where AI translation will benefit the process -relieving the time constraints. Since AI machine translation can produce more accurate first drafts instantly, AI technology benefits translation of news content of all kinds. After all, the value of news drops quickly once it gets outdated.

Quality Expectations

News content where quality expectations for the translation are very high are not always the best candidates for AI translation. There are exceptions of course, equity research reports being one of them. In general high quality translations still require some amount of human post-editing and review. Documents where the information cannot be misinterpreted or written for important clients also fall into this bucket. AI translation can help make the process more efficient, but the significance of professional human translators pertain.

Content Length & Repetition

Both (long) volumes of text and repetition are great candidates for AI translation. Lengthy reports can take a team of translators weeks or more to tackle manually -because of this often times long reports are not translated until specified (such as when requested by a client). Translation memory and multi-user collaboration features in AI translation software can cut the time to translate long documents by more than 50%. Translation of repetitive content is even more beneficial in that the time required can be discounted by up to 60-90%. Any long or repetitive content are best translated with AI software.

Specific Abbreviations & Terminology

Some types of financial news use specific abbreviations (shorthand) and terminology. This is often found in news content specific for particular audiences of that trade e.g debt documents or industry specific reports. While AI translation is generally poor in keeping consistency of specific keywords, TranslateFX's AI software is specifically designed to ensure such issue is at a minimal. This is largely due to the company's focus working with financial translators. Both professional financial and legal translators spend a substantial amount of their energy making sure abbreviations and keywords are localized accurately, and while I can't speak for the others TranslateFX's AI software will help.

Regulatory Requirements

Financial news with regulatory requirements of any kind have much more strict compliance demands. For news content where translations are required, then AI translation is a worthwhile consideration due to the fact that only particular teams and individuals are even permitted to work on the content. In the case where translations aren't required, AI translation is less likely a consideration due to the fact that additional content will simply make the content drafting workflow larger and more complex.

Final Thoughts

We've discussed quite a few factors in whether AI is suitable for the translation of financial news. Since there are a range of these factors and are important in different ways, we have found that often times the suitability is circumstance based. If you have any questions regarding your circumstance, feel free to email me at erik[at]translatefx.com. I would be delighted to discuss.