Machine translation post-editing services (MTPE)
Where human accuracy meets the speed of neural machine translation.
What is MTPE?
The best of both worlds
With machine translation post-editing (MTPE), the language industry is finally overcoming the eternal struggle of man versus machine. It’s welding a partnership. It’s giving us “robot” and “human.”
Today, machine translations can process huge bulks of text and produce a decent translation output in a matter of minutes.
But decent is often not good enough. Pure machine translation can still feel clanky, unnatural. That’s why it gets coupled with a human process: post-editing.
Post-editing strategies
Light Post-editing (LPE)
LPE makes the text coherent and error-free, with minimal human intervention. It's perfect for rush jobs and non-client-facing documents.
Full Post-editing (FPE)
FPE refines the text further. It makes the translation stylistically appropriate, as well: opting for more powerful synonyms, better syntax, rhythm. Appropriate for client-facing content.
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Post-editing: final thoughts
The benefits of MTPE cannot be ignored. In some cases, it can save you up to 50% on costs and provide a four times faster turnaround time.
With a thorough post-editing process, MTPE can bring significant savings in a variety of content. But there are a few caveats.
Fact 1: MT Engines are not equally efficient for all language pairs. While it works perfectly with some language pairs, we’ve seen that machine translation is still glitchy when it comes to other language pairs. It means that the time- and cost-efficiency varies greatly from language to language.
Fact 2: Creative content is still best translated by a human. When your message contains specific cultural notions, puns, and wordplay, humans beat the machine by a long shot. In other words, what you get out of machine translation requires so much human editing that it simply isn’t worth the while. So keep your marketing collaterals, website copy, and social media posts in the hands of someone with a pair of eyes and whose name isn’t spelled in digits.
