5 Effective Strategies for Post-Editing Machine Translation
Human translation takes time, energy, and resources. A great way to reduce this is by using machine translation post-editing, automating the process, and increasing your translation accuracy.
Here are five effective strategies for Machine Translation (MT) post-editing:
1. Understand the need of machine translation post-editing.
Machine translation is often used when you need to publish large volumes of content as quickly as possible with a limited budget; however, the result is not always accurate. Post-editing is necessary when:
• You require a culturally sensitive or relevant translation.
• Your text requires technical knowledge, especially in the fields of medicine, mechanics, or engineering.
• You are translating public-facing materials, such as product descriptions, operation manuals, and catalogs.
• You are translating legal documents for international validity, such as patents, birth certificates, and diplomas.
2. Know your machine translator.
Each machine translator has its pros and cons, and you can’t fully rely on them for translating technical texts. Content ran through Google Translate may give a different result when ran using Microsoft Translator, and its best that you’re aware of the data you’re feeding before you translate anything. For the best results, treat a machine translator’s output as a suggestion; it still needs human review!
3. Use the right tools.
Quality assurance is essential in post-editing. Luckily, there are numerous QA tools that you can use to run final checks so can edit the spelling, terminology, punctuation, consistency, and style accordingly.
4. Take note of machine translation post-editing guidelines.
How can you achieve consistency when a document goes through several post-editors at a time? It’s best to implement strict guidelines before fully translating content. You can use the TAUS post-editing guidelines, among others.
5. Look for MT post-editing service providers.
If you aren’t confident in your ability to post-edit translations, it’s best to leave the task to professional translators.
Some translation companies offer machine translation post-editing services to optimize your workflow, using the most advanced tools to prevent inaccuracies.
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