With the rise of machine translation in the localization sector, a new task for human translators materialized. Post editing, the new job in the industry involves revising machine-produced translations to ensure accuracy, relevance, and proper tonality.
The post-edition process combines machine and human expertise in translation to ensure the final product meets quality standards and is acceptable to the audience. Often, machine-translated output has errors, ambiguities, and amorphous language that post-edition helps to fine-tune and make it more palatable.
Read on to find out more about post-editing in the translation industry.
1. Light Post Editing
Human translators carry out different types of post-edition work on machine-produced output. Light post edition refers to the process of checking for minor errors in the machine translation. A human translator reviews or goes through the interpreted document to ensure it is readable. Light post-editing involves checking for spelling, punctuation, and fundamental interpretation mistakes. It is a fast process that allows the translator to deliver acceptable output speedily. Post-editing is used on documents designed to capture attention, such as marketing content and checklists.
2. Deep Post Editing
For a machine-translated piece to reach human-level translation standards, it needs a deep post-edition. Deep post-editing requires a human translator to go through the machine output and ensure the output meets the highest quality standards. As a result, it is more time-consuming and involving. Human translators revise the machine-translated document in deep post-editing, removing grammatical and punctuation errors and ensuring that it is in the appropriate tone and style. It also ensures intelligibility. After this thorough revision, the post or document is ready for publication.
Factors to consider when Post-Editing
1. Language nuances of source document
To ensure post-editing produces high-quality output, human translators need to check the source document for culture-specific language, humor, technical jargon, and other aspects of language that the machine translator may not understand. Further, source documents need to be assessed for correctness to ensure that translations are error-free.
2. Brand tone
A brand tone is how a company communicates to its customers. Brand tone should be consistent, and companies seeking translation services need to guide the required tone for the translated content.
3. Use of translated documents
How the translations will be used determines the type of post-edition required. For example, social media content may require light post-editing, while output to be published in journals may need deep machine translation post-edition.
4. Using the best translation tools for your business
There are numerous machine translation tools that an individual or organization can use. Translators must ensure they use machine translators that are suitable for their documents and that meet their quality standards. Using the wrong translation tools will result in more work during post-edition.
Benefits of Post-Editing
The importance of post-editing in improving the quality of a machine-translated document or content cannot be understated. While artificial intelligence has increased the efficiency of automated translation tools, human involvement after the machine has done its work makes the translation more usable and acceptable.
Challenges in Post-Editing
While post-editing offers numerous benefits, it also comes with challenges. Human translators need to deal with the nuances and contextual errors that machines often miss. Additionally, ensuring consistency in tone and style across the document can be demanding, especially in lengthy texts. These challenges require skilled translators who can balance efficiency with accuracy.
Training for Effective Post-Editing
Investing in training for translators on effective post-editing techniques can significantly enhance the quality of the final output. Training programs should focus on understanding machine translation limitations, best practices for identifying and correcting errors, and maintaining consistency in style and tone.
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