​Should my company implement AI translation tools

Machine translation software is having a resurgence thanks to recent advancements in cutting edge AI technology (specifically known as deep learning or neural networks.) The specifics of the technology is less important, most people can get by just knowing translation accuracy and many other similar language processing techniques are continually seeing significant improvements in the last few years.

Most companies will likely benefit with AI machine translation tools, but some types of companies will gain more adopting the technology than others.

Below we'll go over key factors one can use to determine their company should adopt AI translation tools:

Boost cross border business

Companies looking to improve cross border business will benefit from AI translation. Thomas L Friedman was spot on in his book 'The World is Flat'. Today, companies and institutions of all types need to account for global economics in their business strategy. Translation and localization is particularly significant for companies doing cross border business. A hefty cost in the past, AI translation help bring translation costs down and make it easier for entire organizations to become more competent in multiple languages.

Reducing business expenses

Companies looking to save on-going translation expenses will benefit from AI translation. Whether outsourced or brought in-house, translation is a labor-intensive job requiring basic human costs. AI translation is not only cheaper but also more consistent and reliable, removing headaches and human resource costs relating to employee overhead, hiring, turnover, and other unforeseen events.

Leverage software to improve productivity

Companies hoping to benefit from digital transformation initiatives will benefit from AI translation. Companies big and small managing and storing their data digitally will more easily add AI translation software into their operations workflow. Even companies with infrequent translation needs can benefit by adopting pay-as-you-go machine translation services.

Urgency of translation

Companies with time sensitive documents will benefit from AI translation. In particular industries, documents (such as financial equity research reports or quarterly financial reports) need to be translated within a short time frame. AI translation tools can cut the time to translate a document by up to 60-90% vs manual translation. This can help alleviate pressure put upon operation teams and reduce margins for error.

Volume of translation

The benefits of AI translation scale well with large volumes of documents to be translation. Any company hiring 5+ full-time translators (or outsource amounts that add up to a similar team size) will automatically fall into this high-volume category. For example, financial printers in Hong Kong hire multiple teams of translators to who help investment banks and their clients list their companies on bilingual stock exchanges requiring all documents to be listed in both more than one language.

Cross border teams

Companies with subsidiaries in multiples countries or employees from different cultures can benefit from AI translation tools to help facilitate external and internal business communications. Teams who's primary language may not be the one used to communicate with one another can benefit from improved communications with AI tools. This reduces errors and miscommunications which often leads to mistrust and resent between teams that may already have cultural differences.

Compliance

Companies who can only hire in-house translators will benefit from AI translation. Many company compliance policies necessitate that sensitive documents cannot leave the company's walls, and requires them to hire translation teams in-house. These teams don't have the benefit of being able to offload large workloads to external translation agencies and AI translation tools are a solution to help improve productivity and allow translation teams to do more with less immediate human resources.