SektorCepte · 2026-10-26
Why a Machine Translation Sounds Careless
A raw machine translation misses the trade word. A tourist reads that as a page the shop did not look at. Correct the first five sentences by hand.
A machine carries a page into another language in a minute. The carried text looks smooth and breaks on the trade word. Paint can come out as wall paint or as hair dye. The machine chooses. If you are a decorator, a line about hair dye turns the shop into another trade. A tourist does not pass this off as a funny mistake. They say the page was not looked at, and they walk. The carelessness stands larger than the wrong word itself. Publishing the raw output is like hanging the wrong writing on the sign.
1. Separate the five sentences people actually read
A person does not read the whole site. The greeting, what work you do, the hours, the place where the price sits, and the address. These five sentences are on the first screen. Correct them by hand. The rest can wait a day. If the five are right, the page looks serious. If the five are wrong, a correct paragraph further down is not read either. Have someone who can correct them read them. If you do not know such a person, ask a neighbouring shop that speaks that language. Five sentences over a coffee are enough. Do not hand the whole site to someone you do not know. Let the five sentences pass through your own mouth as well. The place you stumble when you read aloud is the place the customer will stumble too.
2. Fix the trade word
Every trade has a right name in that language. The machine picks at random among nearby words. Plumbing may come out as water or as electrics, and if the sentence does not make it plain, the wrong door opens. On a menu the name of the dish gets mixed with the name of an ingredient. A sweet and a sauce change places. Leaving that on the page mixes the order in the kitchen. Write the right name aside, and use that name even when the machine says something else each time. Keep the word list short: the name of the trade, three goods, three warnings. The list stays the same at every new translation. Without a list you become a different shop each day.
3. Do not leave hours, price, and address to the machine
Figures usually stay in place, and the word around them slips. A midday break becomes midnight. Included becomes excluded. A neighbourhood name gets translated and cannot be found on the map. These three are written by hand and set inside the machine's sentence. When you set them, read the neighbouring word as well. If the figure is right and the verb is backwards, the promise still breaks. Do not translate the address. Leave it as it is, and put a short direction in that language beside it. The direction should say the way you actually walk. A direction the machine invented leads to a street that is not there.
4. Treat the raw text as a draft
The machine's output is a draft. A draft does not stand in for the published page. Putting the draft on the site without reading it is like hanging a slip an apprentice wrote on the door without checking it. Five sentences corrected once are kept in later translations as well. Translating from zero each time breaks the word you already corrected. If you are adding a new paragraph, pass only that paragraph through. Do not translate the whole page again. A fresh translation also returns a corrected hour to its old state. At the bottom of the page you can say that you have written short in this language and that the detail is welcome inside. Short and right gives more trust than long and scattered.
5. Do not keep an uncorrected page published
If you have no time, do not publish the second language. A language button that stays empty does less harm than a wrong text. Open the button when the five sentences are corrected. A raw page left open by mistake becomes the mouth of the shop for months. Once a month, go into that language and read the five sentences again. If the hours changed, see whether they changed there too. The machine does not look in your place. You look. A page with no one looking seems abandoned to a tourist. An abandoned page pulls the shutter down even in front of an open shop.
This evening, open the first screen in the second language. See whether the greeting, the work, the hours, the price, and the address have been read by hand. If one still stands as the machine left it, take it off the published page or correct that sentence. The tourist who walks the street tomorrow should see a page that has been looked at.