I work in human resources for a software and quality assurance testing company. My company recently got acquired by a Japanese technology conglomerate, which meant my workload suddenly went global and our finances were suddenly under the microscope more than ever. My CAO had come to me with several documents that we needed to translate and send to our new parent company to introduce our staff and facilitate international cooperation. No one in our facility had Japanese fluency, so I approached my boss asking how she preferred we take care of the translation. We were already over budget to so she recommended using the online translator Babblefish that you can get for free. So I took an entire day to input the English text into the online translator and pushed aside all my other projects and pending deadlines. I triple-checked my transcription into the English text. Everything was completely and entirely accurate on my end. When Babblefish spit out the translated text I was overly (and foolishly) confident in the accuracy of the Japanese version because I didn't know that language. Unfortunately, there were errors in the translation, one of which was particularly sexually explicit. The efforts of my supervisor and myself made their way up the chain of command and the international liaison from the Japanese office contacted my boss to address the mistake. Thankfully, we were not discharged, but our efforts to get off on the right foot were thwarted as we tried to cut corners. Our Japanese staff thankfully directed us to translation software to assist us in the future. Paid translation software is not nearly as expensive as I thought either, especially when you consider the alternative similar to what I experienced. Do yourself a favor and rely on the accuracy translation software offers and avoid a blunder and unnecessary embarrassment.
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