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Why we Don't use Google Translate

I often get asked, 'So, why don't you use Google translate? Or, worse, 'I suppose these days you just use Google translate (GT) to translate the Bible.'

Here are several good reasons not to use GT:
1. Most minority languages are not on GT. The one we worked on only became available fairly recently, after the Bible was already translated.
2. GT uses a statistical method, relying on having lots of texts available in the language, and lots of translations of those texts into other languages. It then compares the two and guesses the translation. For minority languages, those don't yet exist in books, let alone online.
3. If you do use it it requires heavy checking and editing of the translation afterwards, which takes time, so you haven't gained anything. This is because it guesses the translation. Google does not, as far as I know employ real translators. The only way of improving the quality of Google translations is for many many people to click 'improve translation' and give Google feedback that way. Since minority groups are small, and often lack internet access, this isn't likely to happen. Bible translations need to be accurate, clear and natural. GT will give you an inaccurate, unclear and unnatural translation.
4. Google can't spot idioms like to 'run a meeting' or euphemisms like 'to pass on'. Nor can it cope with metaphors. A book like Isaiah is about 90% metaphor and 10% not. So Google can't understand Isaiah let alone translate it (you might be thinking you don't understand Isaiah too, but I'm sure you get it better than Google does).
5. The hardest thing about translation is people and cultures. Google is not into relationship building or anthropology 
6. The next hardest thing is linguistics, which is not as predictable or mechanical as people think. Why would it be? Languages vary hugely. Few, even within language groups, are similar to each other. To under the linguistic problems in a text requires a Master's degree or higher. A BA would work for simpler texts. GT doesn't have one of those.
7. GT doesn't understand the differences between audiences. One translation won't usually work for different audiences, hence the plethora of translations of the Hebrew and Greek Bible into English. What we're trying to do is produce the first ever translation of the Bible into a given minority language. It can't choose which audience to translate for, let alone the purpose of that translation i.e. how it might be used. These days we don't start translating until we have got those kinds of answers nailed down, or rather community leaders have.

So, Google translate doesn't work for Bible translation. Guessing just won't cut the mustard.

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