Today, we will discover the top 5 reasons to prefer AI translation for SaaS companies. Learn how AI helps your business go global faster.
Introduction
Many brands usually obtain their translation services from translation agencies or translators registered on their supplier list. These companies or translator groups, which we categorize as language service providers (LSPs), prioritize translating the files in the emails sent to them using both the CAT tool and TMS. In addition to transferring files in dozens of different formats, these companies also receive additional files and images containing various warnings. However, they naturally have difficulty providing a scalable and consistent service due to reasons such as:
- The presence of different brands served by translation service providers,
- The fact that their main resources consist of human translators with limited capacity,
- The varying levels of experience among translators regarding the relevant language, sector, or tools used.
However, brands with large budgets can tolerate this situation for several reasons. A company with abundant resources and high brand awareness has the luxury of waiting. Translation agencies can also prioritize them faster over smaller companies.
For a SaaS company that wants to grow rapidly on a global scale, especially for early-stage startups, working with LSPs is not very easy for the following seven reasons. Time and budget management is extremely important for a SaaS company. A business model that is too dynamic to show the tolerance mentioned earlier needs to develop alternative strategies and engage with LSPs at the right time.
Top 5 Reasons to Prefer AI Translation
1. Cost
If you work with a translator, remember that they typically charge an average fee of $0.10 per word. If your content contains a lot of text, it can cost you thousands of dollars. Additionally, these rates may be higher for some languages.
Moreover, translation agencies charge extra fees for manual media production tasks, such as editing design files that CAT or TMS tools cannot handle and transcribing video or audio content. Since they work on a project basis, they may apply variable pricing based on the customer profile. However, AI translation tools have a very clear pricing policy, regardless of the language or content.
2. Speed
Let’s consider the process after the content that needs to be translated is transferred to LSPs by email or a similar method. The first issue is that the LSP needs to use a certain order of priority to process these contents. Which customer did this request come from? How important is our customer? If you, as an early-stage SaaS startup, are prioritized quickly, you can consider yourself lucky.
Let’s assume we have three stages: pre-translation, translation, and post-translation. In the pre-translation stage, the content should be transferred to tools such as CAT or TMS, as translators will begin the translation process with support from these tools. If the materials contain complex data types, this preliminary stage may take extra time.
During the translation phase, the speed of the translator is a key determinant. According to international standards, a translation agency expects a translator to be able to translate 3,000 words, post-edit 8,000 words, or proofread 10,000 words a day.
In the post-translation process, linguistic quality assurance is performed, and revisions are made if necessary. Even if no revision is needed, customers have a 99% chance of requesting a revision after receiving the translations. Considering that you conduct this entire process through email or similar channels, you can imagine how much time you can lose.
However, AI translation tools can translate millions of characters in minutes. Operations such as post-editing and proofreading can be carried out with LLM support. If you still want the translations checked after the entire process is completed, you can contact the translation agency or translators. Moreover, the cost for post-editing is about half the price, and for proofreading, it can be as low as a quarter.
3. Consistency
If you do not have a dedicated translation agency or group of translators, you are likely to encounter inconsistent translations. While translators may be proficient in the language, they might not be familiar with your brand, industry, or its technical jargon, which significantly increases inconsistencies.
There are solutions developed to prevent such problems. For example, you can work with tools that have glossary features. Most brands have specific terms they have created and managed over the years. These terms are transferred to translation agencies, but translators who are not experienced with the relevant tools may not apply your specific terms correctly. We addressed this issue comprehensively by developing a glossary that can work with multiple AI translation tools.
Additionally, inconsistencies can be partially mitigated by using the translation memory feature. Translation memory is a system that stores previously translated texts and offers suggestions to the translator. The decision of which sentences to add is determined manually by translators during translation. If every sentence is added to translation memories by inexperienced translators, the suggestion system will be compromised, reducing its efficiency. Therefore, translation agencies periodically clean this data. We solved this problem by developing an AI-powered translation memory system. The system automatically decides which texts to retain and how to make recommendations, preventing a lot of manual work and supporting consistent translation.
4. Language Data Ownership
The language data from all translations accumulates over time within the LSP you work with. However, if you are not satisfied with your current LSP and want to change providers, you can only receive this data if your contracts allow it. Some translation agencies may be reluctant to release this data, as they want to turn it to their advantage. They might offer you the best service based on this accumulated data since you have translated similar texts over time. However, leaving the responsibility of tracking these similarities to the LSP may result in higher costs.
By storing your language data on a centralized platform and retaining ownership of it, you can obtain better quality translation services with more competitive offers. This approach helps you overcome the vendor lock-in problem.
5. Potential Service Fraud
It is very difficult to control translation quality as a company, especially in languages you do not know. For this reason, you typically trust the LSP you choose initially. You only realize there is a problem when your native customers point out issues with your translated texts. By then, the damage may be significant, negatively affecting your reputation. Some LSPs may have sent you machine translation output and kept you waiting for weeks, charging you ten times more. Believe me, there are more LSPs working this way than you might think.
To prevent this, you can implement a quality control process by first translating the texts yourself using AI translation tools and then forwarding the translated texts to LSPs. It’s important to use a tool that allows you to track changes in texts historically. While changes may not always be necessary, monitoring the process is beneficial. This approach will enable you to receive much higher quality translation services at half the price.
Summary
We discussed the top 5 reasons to prefer AI Translation when working with LSPs and how they can avoid potential problems by using AI translation tools. But don’t worry, the worst translation is better than no translation at all. Quickly translating all your content into the required languages by choosing the most suitable tool allows an early-stage SaaS startup to appear larger and accelerate growth. Finally, monitoring your content and allocating extra budget to get support from LSPs for the most read or visited content could be a very strategic move.
If you do not know how to select the best AI translation tool as a SaaS company, you can visit the Ultimate Guide: How to Select the Best AI Translation Tool for SaaS Companies in 5 Steps? article.
