Exploring post-editing and why it gives the most bang for your buck

To understand post-editing, you first need to understand machine translation (MT). MT delivers fast, high-volume translations, but it often lacks accuracy and nuance. That’s where post-editing comes in.

What is post-editing?

During post-editing, human translators refine machine-generated translations to ensure they’re clear, precise, and contextually correct. Post-editing includes correcting errors, enhancing readability, and preserving the text’s intended meaning. It addresses issues like awkward phrasing, grammatical mistakes, and cultural nuances that MT may overlook.

This service is essential for public-facing materials where precision and quality are paramount. It’s best suited for customer communications, legal and financial documents, website content, and shorter-lived content. By ensuring consistency in terminology and brand voice, post-editing guarantees that the translation reflects your intended message while maintaining credibility and impact.

Why does post-editing matter?

Despite technological advancements, MT still struggles with complex sentence structures, idiomatic expressions, and industry-specific terminology. Without human refinement, translations can sound unnatural or lead to misunderstandings.

This is especially true for less common language pairs, where MT quality tends to be lower. As well as for content reflecting regional nuances, which often requires additional post-editing to ensure cultural and contextual accuracy.

Where does post-editing fit into the translation process?

Post-editing must adhere to industry standards to ensure high-quality results. ISO 18587:2017 sets clear guidelines for the post-editing of machine translation output, ensuring that human linguists refine translations to meet professional standards. This certification establishes a structured process that enhances accuracy, fluency, and readability. Because machine translation can introduce inconsistencies, unnatural phrasing, or mistranslations, post-editing is essential to ensure the final text meets client expectations and industry requirements.

Incorporating post-editing into the translation workflow typically follows these steps:

1. Source text analysis: A project manager evaluates the original content to determine its suitability for machine translation and to identify any potential challenges. This step includes checking for factors such as text complexity, formatting issues (tags, tables, or code snippets), and data sensitivity that may restrict the use of third-party MT providers. It also includes checking the language combination, particularly if it involves a low-resource language where machine translation quality tends to be lower.
2. Translation memory: A translation memory is linked to the machine-translation plugin within a CAT tool to enhance accuracy by leveraging previously approved translations and maintaining consistency. It also improves efficiency and reduces translation time and costs by eliminating the need to retranslate already approved content.
3. Machine translation: When the text is imported into the CAT tool, a preliminary translation is generated using a combination of previously translated matches from the translation memory and machine translation. Some machine translation plugins allow for custom prompting or client-specific settings, which can include anything from date and number formatting and punctuation rules to inclusive language preferences. These draft translations serve as a starting point for further refinement during post-editing, balancing speed with a baseline level of accuracy.
4. Terminology: Some machine translation plugins within CAT tools offer terminology awareness settings, allowing them to adapt translation suggestions based on a client-approved glossary. This helps ensure consistent use of key terms and alignment with brand or industry-specific language. When this setting is enabled, the MT engine is guided to prioritise and correctly use predefined terms, ensuring that industry or client-specific terminology is applied consistently throughout the text. To function effectively, the glossary must be clean and properly formatted – free of duplicates, synonyms, or ambiguous entries, and compatible with the MT plugin. This feature significantly reduces manual corrections later.
5. Post-editing: Skilled translators review and edit the machine-generated translation to correct errors and enhance readability.
6. Quality assurance: Before delivery, a second linguist or project manager thoroughly checks the final translation, including validating terminology, checking consistency, and aligning with client preferences.

This integrated approach leverages the speed and accuracy of MT while maintaining the industry knowledge and quality guaranteed by human translators.

What are the benefits of post-editing?

The advantages of incorporating post-editing into the translation process include:

• Cost efficiency: Combining MT with post-editing can reduce translation costs compared to human-only translation, making it a cost-effective solution for large projects.
• Faster turnaround: MT accelerates the initial translation phase, and with efficient post-editing, projects can be completed faster than via traditional translation methods.
• More consistency: CAT tools can maintain consistent terminology usage by incorporating translation memories, which is particularly beneficial for technical documents. Post-editors make sure this consistency aligns with industry standards and clients’ terminology.
• Scalability: The combined approach allows for the handling of large volumes of text without breaking the bank or overrunning the budget, thereby delivering the best value for money.

Why let SwissGlobal handle your post-editing translation jobs?

At SwissGlobal, we combine machine translation with expert post-editing to deliver high-quality, accurate, and contextually precise translations. As an ISO 18587-certified provider, we uphold the highest industry standards, ensuring that every translation meets rigorous quality benchmarks. Our team of skilled linguists brings deep industry expertise, refining machine-generated text to make it clear, natural, and impactful. Contact us today for all your translation needs.