Looking for free translation?

Do you have a regular need for translation? Request a free consultation from one of our expert consultants on the most cost-effective solutions for your translation needs.

'Free translation', 'automatic translation', and 'machine translation' are all ways of referring to translations created entirely by software. The software uses a combination of algorithms and statistical methods to generate translations with no human intervention.

Automatic translation has one great thing going for it - it's free. If the purpose of your translation is to quickly get a sense of the point of some material (such as a website or news article in a foreign language), automatic translation is ideal for you.

If your purpose is to market or promote your company, or to convey sensitive complex information (such as in user manuals or technical documents), automatic translation is not yet at the point where it can be relied upon. In this kind of situation free translation can be a 'penny wise and pound foolish' choice - although you save money now, it will cost you later on.

In some cases a combination of automatic translation and human translation can lead to an optimal combination of cost and quality. This kind of 'hybrid' workflow is a specialty of Elanex - contact us for a free consultation with one of our experts on what kind of approach may be most cost-effective for you.

If you are convinced that quality of translation is not important to you, here are some links to the top free translation services available today:

• Google language tools - including Google's free translation service. Although the publicly available translation on Google's site does not yet use the latest technology out of Google Labs, this tool provides decent rule-based translation.
• Babel Fish free translation. The first and best-known online free translation site, Babel Fish uses rule-based technology from Systran to provide translations at a similar level of quality to Google.
• Language Weaver machine translation software. If you are looking to purchase an automatic translation system, Language Weaver is one of the first to create systems based on a 'statistical' machine translation approach, which yields significantly better results than the rule-based systems.