6 mistakes to avoid when automatically translating products

Automatic translators

The best known automatic translators are Google Translate or DeepL . These work primarily with neural networks to understand the meaning of an entire sentence or paragraph, delivering the best automatic translation available today.

The pitfalls of automatic translations

Translating texts using these automatic translators is popular because the translation is obtained quickly. It is therefore encouraged for use in e-commerce; for translating products, blog articles, emails, descriptions, categories, etc., where it can greatly facilitate the preparation of texts for expansion. However, it should be noted that the quality of automatic translations still does not reach the level of human translations. We do not consider an automatic translation as a final translation, as it often needs to be further modified to take into account the context or localization. It is great for first orientation in a foreign language text, but use it with discretion.

👉 You know that the average quality of automatic translations is 65%?

What to watch out for when using automatic translations?

1. Repetition of texts for products

On average, 40% of the texts of products are repeated. Both Google Translate and DeepL translate all texts in bulk and over and over again. This accumulates inaccuracies, results in incorrect translations, and makes the whole process inefficient.

TRANSLADO only translates unique texts. With the help of the know-how of professional translation tools, the application recognizes which texts you have already translated and which you have not. Duplicate texts are not translated again, each sentence is translated only once. TRANSLADO translates the new texts and stores them in TRANSLATION MEMORY. By saving, you create your own set of texts from which you draw for the next translation. In practice, this means that you only pay for the translation of unique sentences. This saves you 60% or more in translation costs and additional manual checking.

2. Marks as part of the translation

Brand names, such as manufacturer or model names, are a standard part of e-commerce texts. Identifying them in translation is crucial, as these words do not translate into another language.

Commercial automatic translators usually cannot recognize tags. TRANSLADO recognizes tags and does not translate them.

3. Pre-publication check

The individual items in your e-shop should be checked before they go online. This will minimize the risk of errors in text or graphics.

TRANSLADO enables continuous storage of translations. If you subsequently discover an error in a product, you will not lose the translation by correcting it. Changes in the source e-shop are automatically updated. In addition, all the steps you take in the application are displayed on a clear dashboard. So you know what you've already checked and what you haven't yet. This makes you work much more efficiently, which you will appreciate when expanding into more countries.

4. URLs inside the text

If you have URLs within the text, you need to manually edit them and redirect them to the correct domain abroad. For example, DeepL does not translate these addresses.

The TRANSADO user interface allows you to edit these addresses in bulk.

5. HTML tags and formatting

Do your texts contain HTML tags? Of course they do, every e-shop tries to have clear and structured labels. However, if they are translated by an automatic translator, it will not preserve their formatting.

The TRANSLADO translator automatically preserves the text formatting.

6. Updating the original texts

Need to update the original texts? If you've used a regular automatic translator, you'll need to think about updating all the translations manually.

TRANSLADO thinks for you when it comes to updating translations. Any changes in the source are automatically applied to the translations. Only the new part of the products will be translated. Your previous edits are thus preserved and supplemented with the new text.

TRANSLADO is one step further

There are several tools on the e-commerce market that use automatic translators, mainly XML feed editors. These are reliable tools that will quickly translate your XML feed and your e-shop can start selling. However, the problem arises when your people need to manually fine-tune the translation. A user-unfriendly interface combined with technically complex settings of individual attributes will greatly reduce your efficiency. E-shops often edit the texts directly on the e-shop, which in turn does not have TRANSLATION MEMORY and does not take into account repetition, so your translators correct the same sentences over and over again and the original cheap translation comes out pretty expensive. At the same time, you can't see anywhere on the dashboard what stage of translation or editing each product is in.

These tools can reliably help you to localize your e-shop into a foreign language and offer you other features, but the translators themselves do not reach the TRANSLADO level. If you have experience with any of the above translators and want to take your texts to the next level, get in touch. We'll use everything you've already translated elsewhere and show you how to translate more efficiently.

New feature: AI translation evaluation

With TRANSLADO you can automatically deal with the six error areas mentioned above. The icing on the cake is its new feature AI translation evaluation of individual products. You no longer have to look for inconsistencies in the translated texts, leave that to the AI.

AI translation evaluation focuses on the following areas in three steps:

• Quality of translation. The AI will flag an incorrect automatic translation. So you'll know which passages need to be corrected by a human translator. Quality check also includes an evaluation of the grammar and style of the translation.
• Method of translation evaluation. Artificial intelligence ranks the translation in one of three levels of evaluation. It calculates the percentage of success of the automatic translation. This function will enable significantly better prioritization of the activities to be focused on in the next phase or where to allocate human resources.
• Translation improvements. The implemented professional CAT tool allows direct editing of texts or translations, efficiently and in bulk for all products. You can upload your own dictionary or a list of words that should not be translated into the interface. Suggested modifications are saved directly in the TRANSLATION MEMORY. If you do not dare to improve the translation yourself, you can make a request for external experts or use the connection to translation agencies. The final translation is then exported directly to your e-shop.

In e-commerce, speed sells

Automatic translation can be a good servant but a bad master. The main advantage is its speed. And in e-commerce, speed is what makes the difference (and sells). With the ability to prioritize and refine your translations, you'll be able to work more efficiently to improve the quality of your text output. The final savings in time and costs will make it easier for you to enter global markets with a portfolio of products that will stand up to foreign competition thanks to quality translation. In addition, TRANSLADO is directly connected to foreign marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, and will bulk create titles and optimized descriptions for your expansion abroad.

👉 Did you know that in the case of seasonal products (e.g. fashion), the speed of product publication determines sales? According to our data, 17% of products are first are sold within 30 days of being listed.

The idea of translating your e-shop into a foreign language doesn't have to be scary anymore. Trust TRANSLADO and its smart features.

💡 TRANSLADO is a unique e-commerce application used for smart and efficient translation management of products on your e-shop with implemented ChatGPT-4, DeepL and Google Translate. This makes TRANSLADO a great tool for automatically creating personalized text content for your products. It can be used for both local and international markets. With the help of artificial intelligence, it can create search engine optimized (SEO) descriptions from basic e-shop text, complete with html tags. All this is created one product at a time or in bulk, or you can automate the whole process.

Stay one step ahead of the competition. Take advantage of effective product translation management for your e-shop and contact us! 📨 email petr.sedlacek@expan.do