emoticon of smiley face with words "no way" beneath it

Lots of folks ask about Google Translate for their websites, to give those speaking other languages access to their site. They want it because it's free. But is it a good idea? Well, that depends.

An Asian restaurant in Russia took advantage of the, sometimes, intentionally bad translation of Google Translate. (Note: not to pick on Google Translate, this happens with all translation software, this promotion just happened to use Google.) But in this case, they did it on purpose.

So a restaurant called Crepe de Chine in Russia took the Chinese names of their dishes and translated them into Russian using Google Translate. For this promotion they used English subtitles so we can see how the translation went.

Being a Columbus Ohio web design and Columbus marketing firm, we know that 94% of Ohio-ans spoke only English at home. While over 20 languages are spoken (from Arabic to Korean) about 4% of the population's native language isn't English.

So the lesson here is: would Google Translate work for your business? Well, depends how technical your product or service. The more you use technology-specific language (say, as a surgeon), the worse ANY translation software will be. Also, in the case of using analogies or colloquialisms (ie: Happy Family Spicy Chicken and Pork), the worse the outcome will be.

So before you count on any translation software, be sure to check it out on your most technical information.