Post-editing is the process of correcting machine translation output so that it meets objective quality criteria. As an early adopter of machine translation, LexWorks has extensive experience in using post-editing in combination with machine translations to meet our client’s needs.
Post-editing is the process of correcting machine translation output so that it meets quality criteria. As an early adopter of machine translation, Lexcelera has extensive experience in post-editing machine translations.
Depending on the quality needed, post-editing may be light or full. Light post-editing aims at making information understandable, if not perfectly fluent, while full post-editing provides publication quality. Full post-editing ensures that the document reads like a human translation, and cannot be identified as a machine translation.
Not all machine translation output requires a post-edit
With proper training and full customization, some machine-translation (MT) engines are capable of delivering understandable quality for functional content without any post-editing whatsoever. Either raw or lightly post-edited MT output may be appropriate for frequently updated content such as customer support knowledge bases, user-generated content (UGC) and legal eDiscovery.
Full post-editing delivers publication quality. It can actually provide higher quality than a traditional process because:
- A well-trained rules-based engine will ensure complete terminological consistency
- Working in a bilingual environment, post-editors have been shown to pay closer attention when correcting MT matches than when correcting TM, (translation memory) matches, and thus they obtain higher quality
- Quality is ‘publication quality’
- The goal is a message that is accurate and complete but indistinguishable from a fully human translation
- The editing effort aims to make more fluent sentences
- Terminology is generally managed by the trained MT engine
- The quality must be equal to that of a traditional translation!
- Quality is ‘understandable’
- Corrections are made only when necessary for comprehension; subjective changes are avoided
- The goal is a message that is accurate and complete
- The text may contain stylistic errors and awkward sentences
- Terminology is generally managed by the MT engine
- The information must be able to be understood without consulting the original text