The arrival of tools like ChatGPT and many others has democratized AI by making it massively accessible, especially in the case of mass-market versions offered free of charge. Having experimented with their own small-scale content creation, many communications managers have also discovered the potential of AI tools when it comes to translation. This has sometimes led to them thinking about the possible benefits of implementing this kind of tool on a large scale in their organization. The aim: to achieve significant time and cost savings by translating in-house communications that were previously outsourced to professional language service providers.
The widespread implementation of AI does, however, present risks with sometimes serious consequences, which many organizations are largely unaware of and underestimate. That’s why we’d like to offer you a few thoughts on this issue. What exactly are these risks and their consequences? Who’s responsible if something goes wrong? You’ll also discover a simple approach to optimize your risk management and help your organization get the most out of AI translation for different types of content.
Risks and their consequences
Quality
One might think that the inevitable factual or linguistic errors and hallucinations of AI translation tools will simply make people smile. This overlooks the fact that serious errors can occur that can significantly affect the comprehension and practical use of the translated content. For the target audience, the damage is real. For an organization that communicates inaccurately, the consequences can range from public relations crises to complaints or lawsuits to loss of clients or contracts.
Relevance
Even when its quality is acceptable, content translated with AI tools often has an increasingly generic feel that fails to capture an organization’s unique voice and personality. In the case of more strategic content, this means losing much of the effect and relevance needed to stand out from the competition. The problem is doubly disadvantageous at a time when audiences are increasingly demanding localization and personalization.
Security
If internal managers use an AI tool without sufficient security guarantees, there is a risk that confidential organizational information will become publicly accessible in the databases that feed the mass-market version of the tool. This can have all kinds of legal, commercial and operational consequences, which are often very difficult or impossible to resolve.
Costs
It’s one thing to use the mass-market version of an AI tool free of charge. But subscribing to the business version to give access to the whole organization is a commitment that is much more restrictive and costly. Costs often add up quite dramatically when entire teams translate large quantities of content. Something else to bear in mind: the organization’s managers often spend quite a bit more time than expected to achieve an acceptable level of quality when revising strategic translations.
Who’s responsible?
When your organization deals with a professional language service provider, particularly for AI translation, it obtains solid guarantees: distinctive quality and relevance of translations, confidentiality of information, and so on. So it’s up to the language service provider to manage the risks to protect your organization from any unfortunate consequences.
What happens if you choose not to deal with a language service provider and translate everything in-house? The responsibility for risks and their consequences lies with your organization. You rely on your own managers to spot and properly correct all errors and hallucinations, and to produce content that meets all your requirements. Does this mean that your managers have to bear the consequences of serious translation errors, irrelevant strategic content or breaches of confidentiality?
This kind of thinking is still largely absent in many organizations that are moving or considering moving to in-house AI for all their translation.
An approach adapted to two very different levels of risk
An effective way to optimize your risk management in AI translation is to implement an approach tailored to content that presents different levels of risk depending on its strategic importance to the organization.
NON-STRATEGIC CONTENT
DEFINITION
Your content that has a limited lifespan, visibility and operational, commercial and legal importance for the organization.
APPROACH
In-house translation using AI tools and proofreading by your managers can often save you time and money, with little risk and no serious consequences.
STRATEGIC CONTENT
DEFINITION
Your content that is more complex in subject or style, that has a high (sometimes lasting) visibility with sensitive target audiences, or that is of great operational, commercial or legal importance to the organization.
APPROACH
To guarantee translations that meet all your requirements, it’s much more efficient, secure and cost-effective to call on a professional language service provider that offers you the necessary expertise and resources.
This clear and simple approach enables you to optimize not only your risk management, but also the use of your human and financial resources for all your organization’s multilingual communications. Your in-house teams have maximum autonomy on a daily basis to manage the translation of a large amount of non-strategic content quickly and cost-effectively. They also know how to protect the organization from unnecessary risks in the case of strategic content.
Why entrust your strategic content to a professional language service provider
Professional language service providers are your key partners for AI translation of strategic content. By dealing with them, your organization is protected from any risks associated with quality, relevance or safety issues. You get the concrete guarantees that only qualified, certified and recognized translation firms can offer.
The teams at professional language service providers have a number of distinctive strengths that are absolutely essential when it comes to handling your strategic content.
- A complete range of the best AI tools specialized in translation.
- Experts with degrees who are specialized in your industry and accredited by professional associations officially recognized in laws across Canada.
- An integrated, secure technological infrastructure, ensuring ideal use of tools and total protection of your organization’s confidential information.
- Certified processes that deliver the best results with maximum efficiency, at the lowest cost to you.
- Consulting teams to help you determine which content can be translated and checked in-house by your own managers and which content is best translated or edited by professional language teams.
Customized support from Versacom
Versacom offers you a unique set of language solutions and AI translation consulting services, with all the guarantees that matter to your organization: accuracy, quality, relevance, absolute confidentiality.
When you choose Versacom, you can be sure of constant access to language teams with the many strengths that are essential to your organization. Their knowledge, skills, experience, expert processes and integrated technology ecosystem enable them to quickly deliver maximum value for all your strategic content.
Our specialists can also help you target your strategic content and put in place the best approach to ensure fast, efficient, cost-effective and risk-free translation and revision from a linguistic, terminological, industry-specific, strategic and security point of view.
You won’t find a stronger, more supportive partner to help your organization eliminate AI translation risks and deliver error-free content every time, with the impact needed to fully contribute to achieving your goals and enhancing your brand.