Translation of Rare and Low Resource Languages

Translation of rare languages is a growing challenge on all fronts for the translation and localization industry. There are tens of thousands of translation companies and freelancers that can provide translation services into almost all common European and North American languages. There are numerous African and Asian locales that are very hard to find and have very few linguistic resources available. We discuss some of the challenges and issues that our clients face concerning rare and exotic languages. 

Every so often we hear from a client who has spent hours if not days looking for a resource to provide translation of rare languages such as Acholi, Dzongkha, Ewe or Mien. Finding a resource into these languages is very difficult and even harder to find a qualified and competent linguist. Given the rare and exotic nature of these languages, it means the population speaking them are relatively small. It also means that such languages are either spoken in poorer parts of the world where access to education, in particular post-secondary education, is difficult. As a result there are very few competent linguists that can actually provide a meaningful translation.

So what do you do when you are faced with the dilemma to get your announcement, letter or document translated into such a rare language? Well, you could rely on an amateur or someone who claims to be the master of all languages and provides translation into 10 African languages. You are on your own and you have to take your chances as you don’t know what the translated text will read in the target language when delivered to you. Or, you could engage a professional language services provider (LSP) that covers translation of rare languages among its other offerings.

These companies follow a strict process of qualifying linguists for all languages, including rare languages. As their business depends on reliability and accuracy, they take every measure to make sure their resources have the proper education, experience and acumen to translate into their target language. At Hybrid Lynx, for example, one of our requirements is that the translators for these languages must be in-country and translate only in their native language, unless political situation dictates otherwise (there are situations where in-country resources are impossible to hire due to sanctions etc.) Additionally we make sure all our linguists are trained about client specifications and remain in full communication throughout the project.

While technology has helped make significant strides in obtaining a rough meaning of content in another language, it has not really helped  rare languages. It is not possible to use of Machine Translation (MT) as there is less content in these languages to build a usable corpus. Machine Translation engines rely on massive volumes of translated content to learn and generate statistics about the syntax and terminology usage in a particular language, using it later to translate new content. Training MT engines in these languages is not easy or cheap. It requires a significant amount of investment, both in time and money, to develop a usable corpus. Having the right LSP partner will help you develop an MT engine that can be used later on and reduce your costs for translation of rare languages.

We help companies and government agencies of all sizes communicate with their audiences in their local languages and provide professional translation of rare languages. Contact us today to learn more or to discuss your situation with us.