Why choose automotive specialists for machine translation?

The number of use cases for machine translation in automotive are increasing. And to match the need, an increasing number of generic engines are aggressively promoting their offerings. But there are good reasons to work with a specialist automotive translation provider over a generic one.

Imprimatur has three decades’ experience in the automotive industry. We are the only specialist translation company listed by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders in the UK. Our customer list speaks of our knowledge of the subject matter and our long-term commitment to the industry.

Machine translation platform

A generic machine translation platform can handle a variety of tasks reasonably well, but its output quality is unlikely to improve over time.

Verto, from Imprimatur, is powered by our advanced automotive AI translation engine, purpose-built with specialised sub-domains for passenger cars, motorcycles, light commercial vehicles, yachts and agricultural machinery.

There is no content for medical and healthcare, no content for food and beverage, no content for gaming, no content for education and no content for construction and architecture.

The output from our platform will always be in context because there is no additional information from other industries to dilute the message.

Use of your legacy assets

Many companies who have been translating for decades will have translation memories – databases that hold previously translated texts. And these translation memories will contain texts that have been approved by or had input from your own subject matter experts.

We don’t waste those years of learning. We ensure that all copy for machine translation is first passed through your translation memories to ensure we reuse your precious assets before we create anything new.

Verto can make use of translation memories in any and every language you support. We don’t limit you to the major European languages.

Specially crafted dictionaries

A generic platform allows you to create your own dictionaries – but will they truly improve quality? Do you have the time to populate them, the resources for such a lengthy task, and, most importantly, the expertise to do it effectively?

Working with Imprimatur gives you access to our trained linguists who will create the dictionaries for you and adjust them with new learning over time. Our linguists have decades of experience, and they understand the difference between human and machine translation and the way in which the dictionary is used by each discipline.

Tone of voice and audience

A lot of generic platforms will give you the tools to write for a given audience in your brand tone of voice – but knowing which settings to select is not a straightforward task.

Imprimatur has a legion of trained linguists who have taken the time to test and understand every setting both individually and in combination and have the knowledge to fine-tune the settings to achieve the tone of voice for a given audience.

Support

Generic platforms follow a one-size-fits-all model, designed for millions of users and optimised for the majority. They offer extensive AI support, but the experience is largely hands-off.

At Imprimatur, every project is personal. We provide human oversight and expert input at every stage, ensuring outcomes are tailored to your unique needs.

Value-added services

Unlike a generic platform which will do the one thing it offers, Imprimatur’s machine translation service sits within a complex workflow to allow you to access other services. When your translation is generated, if it still needs some formatting, you can click the workstream in Verto and it will be routed to a publishing specialist to produce print- or digital-ready output for you. We don’t make you do it yourself.

Industry understanding

There are times when machine translation alone is not enough – it could be a technical text where you need human input. For those times, you can have a hybrid option called Post Edited Machine Translation (PEMT). Verto still uses AI-powered machine translation in the first instance, but it is then edited by a specialist automotive human translator for the extra peace of mind.

Future focus

Injecting Imprimatur’s quality and customer service-driven ethos with the latest technological innovation is an ongoing pursuit. We have put our 30 years’ experience into Verto’s automation and underpinned it with functions, features and workstreams tailored to multilingual automotive communications.