Translation issues Cancel Se requiere un título

When I get letters from the child I'm sponsoring (translated from Spanish to English), I see errors that no human being ever would make, but exactly the kind of error a rough automated translator would make. And I'm fine with that because I have the written letters. But do MY letters get the Google Translation treatment? Or does the child get it read to by a volunteer at the Community Center there? I wrote one hand written letter before, but I tired to translate it into Spanish myself, and maybe I butchered it badly ​because I never got that option again. They only give me the option to write through the website. But anyway, are sponsored children getting quality translations? Thanks in advance for any replies!

I'm afraid I can't answer your question, but I'm confused. How do you no longer have the option to write handwritten letters? Were you asked not to? That seems odd. I always send handwritten letters and now that I'm learning Spanish I send them written in English and Spanish. I haven't heard of CI asking people not to send handwritten letters before and....Well now I'm confused as to why they would.

The letters that I've received having been translated into English are always easily understood. Often, they're not perfect, but I wouldn't expect them to be. All I know about the translation on what they receive, is that responses indicate that they've understood my letters.

They certainly have live translators. I've met them and seen them working with a stack of letters.

I was wondering the same thing. I know there are several sponsors on MSC who write to their children in Spanish and even those would have to be checked for inappropriate content. I am also pretty sure that all letters between a sponsor and their child are read by a CI staff member in that childs country. For them English is a second language, so mistakes can happen. I once got a letter from Ecuador that mentioned my sponsored child enjoyed playing with her brothers and sisters. Since she had only brothers, that bothered me. I took the letter to work where I had a coworker translate, and in her letter to me Ruth had written that she enjoyed playing with her siblings. Your siblings are your brothers and sisters. I don't think that machines translate letters, (CI would know the answer to this) but it's possible they do. Then the translated letters could be more easily read by a staff member. That kind of makes sense too, especially considering the vast volume of letters they handle. Either way there could be an occasional mistake.

I write all my letters by hand and mail them to Kansas City to be forwarded to my sponsored children. ​Are you saying you are not allowed to do that?

I always write the letters in Spanish (with some help from a friend) and I can understand the children's responses without needing a translation. However, I do still read the English translation and so far I haven't found any major errors - definitely not the type that a computer would make. The only "errors" I noticed were in cases where it was possible that the person translating the letter didn't understand the context of what was written and either omitted that part or changed it because to him/her it made more sense that way, so the Spanish and English sentences ended up being completely different. In my opinion, the translations are pretty good overall.

@MaxwellsEquations: I want to explain you are able to handwrite and snail mail letters for your child to our Kansas City, Missouri office any time you would like. We do send new sponsors a "Write Your Child" form to help them begin their first letter to the child. However, we don't send these out routinely, so you would have only received this once, but are welcome to handwrite or online write any time you'd like. 

To all of you wondering, we didn't change the guidelines you can still handwrite your letters and cards, if that's what you enjoy doing. 

In addition, in all of our agencies (except the Philippines) we use a combination of staff translators and contracted translators (who are very familiar with our child protection guidelines), to review and translate sponsor and child letters. 

As mentioned by someone, for all of these translators English is a 2nd language and there will be some minor mistakes. Translators are asked to convey the child’s message as close to the tone and ability of the child as possible. The translations are intentionally not polished to provide a better impression of the child’s writing.​

Probably the hardest part of translating a letter is understanding the handwriting of the child. Most of the letters written by our children are full of miss-spelled words, and the children refer to local customs and use local expressions, which can be difficult to read and/or translate. 

So, in a nutshell, all translations – globally – are done by people.  They are never done by software​.  I imagine we'd probably break google translate if we tried to use it. 

As a linguist, I applaud CI's decision to use only human translators. While machine translation can be useful for getting the gist of a simple text, it has trouble dealing with specialized, complex or non-standard writing. I imagine the children's (and sponsors') letters are full of colorful local details and unusual or even wrong terms and sentence structures. In that case, a machine translation could end up being completely off.

I tried to post this on message board in the discussion about translation issues, but I got an error message. I'm trying it here now...
On the subject of Google Translate ... it seems to be getting much better. As I've recently been communicating in real-time Spanish with a graduated sponsored child, I have to rely upon it, and I've noticed how the translation changes as I write, adjusting itself as it "understands" the context. I've always hired a professional translator for my letter, but I ​needed to write some quickly to take with me on my upcoming trip to Central America (to make up for not writing last year). Obviously, hand-delivered letters must be in pre-translated to Spanish (but I do show them to the staff ​for approval before the kids get to read them). I took a chance this time on using Google Translate for a full page letter that contained some complicated topics (such as a new extreme sport called flyboarding).
When I was done, I sent the letter to a native Spanish speaker friend of mine who is also fluent in English. He told me that the letter was nearly perfect:
"I just checked the translation and Google translate did a very good job! The letter is quite readable, and I would only make some minor corrections. For example, when you say "I went swimming with big turtles in the ocean and held an iguana on my shoulders" Google translates as "Fui a nadar con grandes tortugas en el océano y sostuvo una iguana sobre mis hombros". The only problem here is that "sostuvo" is third person of the "perfect past" tense of the verb sostener, and you want to use "sostuve" (first person). Of course, it's difficult for Google because in English you just say "held", and that does not give you information about whether it's first, second or third person, or even if it's plural or singular. It's always held: "I held", "you held", "he held", "we held", "you held" and "they held". In Spanish, each of those translates differently: "yo sostuve", "tu sostuviste", "él sostuvo", "nosotros sostuvimos", "vosotros sostuvisteis", "ellos sostuvieron".Another rough spot, even though it's technically correct, is the use of "usted" in the second paragraph. Usted sounds way too formal, and in an informal letter like this I would use "tú".But those are minor things. It's very readable anyway."
I think this is a pretty good endorsement for the software. Only one minor problem (I should have caught the usted/tu error myself). Point being that Google Translate is no longer as mechanically literal as it was a few years ago, and can be a very valuable resource - at least in the case of Spanish. I don't know about other languages. Some of 'em look really complicated.