How Machine Translation Can Support the Legal Sector

Machine Translation, or MT, is the process of translating speech or text via a computer or piece of artificial intelligence software, without any human input.
 
Machine Translation can be beneficial for organisations across multiple sectors, but how exactly can it help legal firms with their translation needs?

When to Use Machine Translation in the Legal Sector
Machine Translation is typically most beneficial in large legal cases when a high volume of content requires translation in a short timeframe. This could include reference documents, litigation documents and the identification of important documents.
 
Using this method of translation means legal staff can quickly identify which documents are most important and require closer attention. Machine translated documents are not intended for use in an official capacity, but to help legal firms at an internal level.

The Benefits of Machine Translation
Machine Translation can help to make large volumes of paperwork more manageable, allowing legal firms to focus their time, money and other resources on the most important documents and information.
 
Documents translated using MT can be stored securely within protected software, and some of these tools have a translation memory, enabling the creation of a software glossary to speed up future translations, therefore improving time and cost efficiencies.
 
However, it’s important to bear in mind that machine translation software is as yet unable to accurately translate nuances in grammar, context and tone.

What Are the Next Steps After Machine Translation?
Once a document has been translated using MT, the legal team will then need to evaluate which translated documents are most relevant to the case. There are then two options, depending on turnaround time and budget:
 
Human linguists can translate the necessary documents in full to ensure all nuances, errors and ambiguities in need of clarification are captured.
 
Post-editing can be carried out, something that always benefits from being conducted by translators with a legal sector specialism. This option is typically faster and more cost-effective.
 
At THG Fluently, organisations working in the legal sector can benefit from the speed of machine translation combined with the added detail and care of human expertise. Machine Translation can help your firm to save time when it needs to, while translation by a human linguist can help to guarantee greater accuracy further down the line.
 
If you'd like to learn more about the Machine Translation services available at THG Fluently, feel free to get in touch.