How accurate is the translation?

Machine translation produces reasonable results in most cases. But it cannot substitute a human translation. For best results, write in complete sentences, check your spelling (as it cannot translate misspelled words), and avoid idiomatic expressions and slang (such as "What R U doing?).

Can I use machine translation software instead of a Human Translator?

The answer depends upon the level of accuracy needed. Human translators cannot be completely replaced by Translation Software due to the complexity of language and the cultural differences. Translation software can help in reducing the time and costs involved in translating documents. It is designed to give you the gist of a document. The software can be used to generate a rough draft and then be trained by adding your own terms to dictionaries. This can increase the accuracy of the translation results dramatically. Moreover, the additional tools in the software can be used to identify one’s style of writing.

How to get better translation results?

Type all accents and special characters used in the language. Using no accents or special characters would be generally considered as a misspelling.

For example, in Spanish language: "sí" would be translated as "yes", but "si" (without the accent) would be translated as "if".

French language: "où" would be translated as "where", but "ou" (without the accent) would be translated as "or".

German language: "wurde" would be translated as "became", but "würde" would be translated as "would become".

Italian language: "se" would be translated as "if", but "sé" would be translated as "itself"

Do the punctuation rules count?

Absolutely. Most translation engines consider standard language punctuation rules. To get an accurate translation, follow these rules. Check the difference:

English to French translation:
"how are you" - "comment sont vous"
"how are you?" - "comment allez-vous?"

Spanish to English translation
"¿Me extrañas?"- "Do you miss me?"
"Me extrañas"- "You miss me"

How the translation depends on the letter capitalization?

Dramatically. Check the difference:

Russian to English translation:
"дорогой мартин" - "Road martin"
"Дорогой Мартин"- "Dear Martin"

German to English translation:
gute nacht – good nacht
gute Nacht - good night

In the German language, nouns and most words with the syntactical function of nouns are capitalized, which is supposed to make it easier for readers to find out what function a word has within the sentence. Ignoring this rule will be considered as misspelling.

To check the translation accuracy I translated back to the original language. The results are different. Why?

Machine translations are not perfect. It can by no means substitute the human translation. Online translator can be used to obtain an instant draft translation. The “back translation“ is far from being the proper way to get the original text due to the assymetric sentence structure and word meaning in different languages. When you translate the text into another language, some words can be translated in a number of ways depending on the context analysis, grammar and syntactic rules. Therefore, when the text is translated back into the original language these words may be translated differently.

I noticed that some words are transliterated instead of being translated.

Online Translator transliterates words in the following cases: unknown words, proper names, geographical places. To get from the Online Translator the best it can do for you, make sure that the input text is correct. Be sure to type all accents and other special characters required in the language you are typing. Check the spelling of your text to make sure that it is error free prior to translating. If a word is misspelled it may get translated incorrectly, or it may not be translated at all.

Why is the translated text identical to the source text? Why it is not translated?

You may be trying to translate the text using incorrect language pair. For example, you translate German text, while the translation direction is set to the English-French pair. In such a case, French translation engine won’t recognize your German text, and returns the source text as the translation. Always make sure that the direction is set according to the actual language used. Or check mark the Auto detect option.
Another reason for this error may be that your text has too many spelling errors. Misspelled words cannot be translated. To ensure your text is error free, use the speller before the translation.