Machine translation and post-editing

Machine translation is a solution for large-scale, structured translation masses. It is suitable for non-fiction texts with significant amounts of repetition and a regulated structure. In these cases, there is usually such a large amount of text to be translated that conventional translation may be slow and not very cost-efficient.

There are many different machine translation systems. However, today, the most interesting method is neural machine translation (NMT). Artificial neural networks process entire sentences in their context and the quality of the resulting translations is improving at a fast rate. The information security of professional machine translation systems has also improved: translation always takes place in a secure environment and the customer’s materials do not leak into public channels.

Machine translation usually needs to be accompanied by post-editing. This means that a human translator or editor checks the machine-translated text, corrects any errors and edits clumsy structures. When a machine translation system is trained to produce text that meets the defined criteria, the combination of machine translation and post-editing may generate significant cost savings and efficiency improvements. 

It is important to understand that machine translation is not a solution for all situations. When you need smoothly flowing text, absolute accuracy and the best quality, a translation by a human translator is an unbeatable option. We are happy to advise you more on when and for which purposes machine translation is worth considering.