The Case for Human Expertise:

1. Accuracy, Understanding, and Cohesion

• Understanding vs. Pattern Matching: Large Language Models (LLMs) operate based on probability, predicting how words usually appear together. They do not understand the meaning, context, or intent of the text. Only a human professional decodes the original message and transfers its true meaning. With AI, you are relying on a linguistic gamble.

• Specialization vs. Generalization: AI often struggles with languages other than English, as developers focus primarily on the dominant language. A specialized human translator is an expert in their specific language combination, ensuring quality regardless of the source or target language. Moreover, a human translator or interpreter specialisedin a given field will know the concepts and terms of that specific sector, ensuring accurate translations with appropriate, field-specific terms.

• The Hallucination Factor: AI is prone to "hallucinations"—generating confident but false information. Only a human expert with deep industry and linguistic knowledge can accurately identify and correct these critical errors.

• Cohesion and Brand Consistency: Base AI often translates the same term, slogan, or product name inconsistently throughout a document or different documents. Human translators maintain coherence and brand identity by using client-specific terminology databases (glossaries) for all the projects of an specific client.

2. Risk, Responsibility, and Cost

• Financial Impact of Errors: Errors in critical fields (e.g. Medicine and Pharmacy) carry immense responsibility. You cannot blame an AI for a mistranslation that leads to a regulatory violation or patient harm. Correcting such high-stakes errors costs far more in the long run than investing in an accurate human translation upfront.

• Creative Transcreation (Marketing): In creative fields like Marketing, translation is often transcreation—adapting and rewriting a message to resonate culturally. AI (for now) lacks the cultural intelligence, irony, and creative flair required to effectively sell a product or idea in a new market. Not to mention, AI bases its output on what is already out there—you will never invent something new if all you get is a combination of what already exists. If you need a creative, effective translation, AI can help you brainstorm, but will not get you far.

• Control and Quality Assurance: If you are not fluent in both the source and target languages, you cannot verify the AI's output for linguistic or conceptual correctness. Relying on an expert ensures professional vetting and accountability.

3. Data Privacy and Project Management

• Data Security: Reputable human translators adhere to strict non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and privacy standards, safeguarding your confidential client and business information. Free AI tools often use the data you input to train their models, creating a significant data privacy risk.

• Dedicated Project Management: A professional translator takes ownership of your project from start to finish, offering consultation, managing complex file formats, and delivering a finalized, quality-assured product, without the need for frustrating, fragmented copy-pasting on ad-filled websites.

4. The Human Edge in Interpretation

In face-to-face communication, the difference between human and AI is even more pronounced:

• Engagement and Endurance: Listening to an interpreter's human voice, with its appropriate intonation, emotion, and pace, maintains audience engagement and concentration, especially during long conferences or intense negotiations. A monotonous machine voice is mentally exhausting and ineffective. Moreover, a skilled human interpreter can faithfully render humor, irony, and persuasive tone, ensuring your message lands exactly as intended.

• Capturing Context: AI often fails to recognize regional dialects, accents, or non-standard speech, defaulting to standard language (e.g., Hochdeutsch) and often omitting entire sections of conversations. A human interpreter is trained to understand linguistic variations.

• Non-Verbal Communication: The meaning of speech is profoundly affected by body language, gestures, and visual aids (e.g., pointing to a graph or conveying irony through a gesture). AI does not see the speaker or the environment, meaning crucial non-verbal cues are entirely missed, leading to incomplete or distorted meaning transfer.