Why You Still Need a Professional Translator to Edit Your Machine Translations

Does your business use machine translation? If so, you’re likely enjoying the speed and cost advantages that machine translation can deliver. However, if you’re not using a professional translator – a human one! – to edit your machine translations, you could be missing a trick.

Below, we’ll explain why oversight by a professional translator is so important when you use machine translation, and how you can ensure you choose the right machine translation post-editing (MTPE) service to meet your needs. 

Why Do Businesses Use Machine Translation? 

There are plenty of benefits to using machine translation. Advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning mean that machines now learn by mirroring the way that humans acquire language. This has led to a step-change in the quality of machine translation output. Businesses can now rely on machine translation to deliver text in multiple languages rapidly – and with no cost attached.

The time and cost savings are clearly attractive in a competitive business environment. So, too, is the perceived efficiency that comes with having machine translation at your fingertips. You can undertake the translation whenever you need to – there’s no need to contact anyone or arrange anything as you can translate your text instantly online.

The major disadvantage of machine translation has, until recently, been its quality. However, machine learning has done much to close the gap between human and machine translation. That said, there is still a qualitative difference between the two types of output, with even the most advanced phrase-based machine learning translation models capable of misunderstanding the intent of a document, its nuance, idioms and so on. 

This is where machine translation post-editing comes in.

What Is Machine Translation Post-Editing? 

Machine translation post-editing (MTPE) is a service that blends the quality of professional translation with the speed and reduced cost of using machines. A suitable trained translator works with the copy produced by machine translation to ensure that it clearly conveys the meaning of the source text and will resonate appropriately with its intended audience.

The task is about much more than simply proofreading the copy to identify any grammatical errors. The translator needs to consider the text in its entirety, having been specially trained to work with machine translated copy and – ideally – with the particular machine translation system being used.

With the growth of machine translation, MTPE has become an important area of work for many translators. Professionals can benefit from embracing it, to ensure their skills remain relevant to clients’ evolving needs. Businesses can benefit from translators doing so as well, as the more professionals that offer MTPE, the greater the choice of high-quality translation and editing services that businesses can benefit from. 

The Benefits of Professional Translator Services in Editing Your Machine Translations 

Using a professional translator to edit your machine translated documents means you can enjoy the best of both worlds – faster, higher-quality translations that cost less than using only human translators.

There are added benefits too. With larger projects, for example, a professional translator can bring a degree of consistency to the copy during editing that machines cannot guarantee.

Professional translators can also offer specializations that mean they are particularly well suited to preparing copy for the intended audience. Marketing translations are an example of this. They need to be carefully finessed for the target readership, with messages carefully crafted so that they both reflect the original copy and resonate in a way that delivers in terms of encouraging people to move into and down the marketing funnel.

Translation specialisms are also important when it comes to content such as medical or legal documents. Even a minor mistake made in a machine translation could have significant repercussions in these fields – hence the need for a suitably qualified and specialist professional translator to edit it. 

Hiring a Certified Professional Translator 

Getting the best results out of machine translation means choosing the right tools and the right professionals to work on your copy. Finding the best machine translation software is about looking for the right blend of innovation, dynamism and intuition – along with a user-friendly interface and extensive language support, of course.

Choosing the right professional translator, meanwhile, means seeking out an MTPE specialist – someone suitably trained and experienced at working with machine-translated texts. Finding a translation service that holds ISO 18587:2017 – Machine Translation Post-Editing certification is a sensible first step. Once you’ve found such a firm, it’s time to match their sector-specific expertise with your own translation needs, to ensure the best quality results from your MTPE service.

Ultimately, the goal with using a professional translator to edit your machine translations is to achieve the ideal blend of accuracy and efficiency at a price that delivers maximum value to your business. Machine translation can help you balance your budget, while a professional human translator can provide you with the peace of mind that comes from knowing your translations are both free of errors and beautifully crafted to suit the needs of their intended audiences perfectly.

If your business needs to handle high translation volumes and reduce time to market while maximizing quality, why not speak to Tomedes about how our machine translation post-editing service can help?