In recent years, as the accuracy and prevalence of machine translation have improved, you may have heard the term "post-editing" more frequently. While the number of companies and individuals using machine translation tools is increasing, there are cases where machine translation alone does not provide sufficient translation quality. Therefore, "post-editing" plays a crucial role in enhancing translation accuracy. Post-editing is the process of correcting and adjusting the output of machine translation, and it is an essential task, especially for documents that require precision, such as legal documents, technical documents, and marketing materials. This article will focus on four important points of post-editing and introduce methods to make the use of machine translation even more effective.
- Table of Contents
1. What is Post-Editing?
"Post-editing" refers to the process of reviewing and making necessary corrections to translations generated by machine translation. A specialist who performs this task is called a "post-editor."
In traditional translation work, it was common for the translator to translate the original text, and for a reviewer to check that translation. On the other hand, when using machine translation, the translation itself is done by the machine, and a post-editor compares the original text with the translated text to make corrections and adjustments. This allows for part of the translation process to be automated, making it possible to proceed efficiently while reducing the overall work time.
2. Reasons for Needing Post-Editing
Although the accuracy of machine translation has been improving year by year, it is still difficult to expect the same level of accuracy as human translators. Therefore, post-editing plays an important role. There are several reasons why post-editing is necessary.
Context Understanding:
While machine translation has a high ability to accurately translate words and phrases, it can be difficult to deeply understand and translate context. This is especially true for documents that contain ambiguous expressions, technical terms, and cultural nuances, which are prone to mistranslations and unnatural translations. Post-editing allows for adjustments that take these contexts into account.
Consistency and Uniformity:
In long documents and complex content, it is important to maintain consistency in terminology and expressions. Machine translation can sometimes output the same term with different translations, which can affect the overall reliability of the document. Post-editors check for consistency in terminology and style, providing a unified, high-quality translation.
Grammar and Style:
Machine translation output may not be grammatically correct or may not be natural text. It is especially necessary to adjust the text to be more fluent according to the grammatical rules and style of the target language. Post-editing is the necessary work to make it understandable and natural for the reader.
Accuracy in Specialized Fields:
In translations that require specialized knowledge, such as technical documents and legal documents, it can be difficult for machine translation to accurately capture specialized terminology and specific contexts. Post-editors possess expertise in that field and make corrections to ensure accurate translations.
3. Benefits of Post-Editing
By performing post-editing, you can gain the following benefits.
Man-Hour Reduction:
Translation work is performed by machines, which can shorten the time compared to traditional translation processes. With proper work by post-editors, translation can be completed in a short time.
How to streamline post-editing after machine translation?
Improving Translation Quality:
Machine translation alone can result in unnatural expressions and mistranslations, but by performing post-editing, these issues can be resolved, leading to more natural and accurate translations. In particular, for specialized content or context-dependent sections, post-editing contributes to quality improvement.
4. Four Points to Keep in Mind During Post-Editing!
As mentioned earlier, the latest machine translation technologies have several weak points. Here are four points to keep in mind during post-editing.
4-1. Numeric Values
This is the result translated by an online translation tool.We won't go into detail about the accuracy of the English text, but please pay attention to the numbers highlighted in red. The translated text contains numbers that differ from the original.Recent machine translation technology has become capable of generating very fluent translations, but occasionally, such numerical errors can occur.The example above is an extreme case, but we want to avoid sending a quotation to our clients that contains such translations. Let's include a post-editing step to ensure that any numerical errors are corrected.
4-2. Tags
When translating tagged files such as HTML and XML, one must pay attention to the "tags".There are various types of tags, such as formatting tags that modify text and variable tags that change the displayed content depending on the situation. When translating sentences that include these tags, it is possible for the necessary tags to be missing from the translated text or to be added incorrectly. Therefore, during post-editing, the structure of the tags is compared between the original and translated text, and they are rearranged correctly if necessary.In addition, if a sentence contains many tags, the accuracy of machine translation can significantly decrease. In such cases, it is necessary to re-translate, making post-editing essential when machine translating tagged files such as HTML and XML.
4-3. Inconsistency in Style and Phrasing
When translating, it is important to maintain consistency in phrasing and style to avoid confusing the reader.Looking at the example above, the structure of the English text is the same, but the structure of the Japanese text is different.Additionally, common examples of variation in notation occur, such as "server" and "server" or "user" and "user".In general documents, it is not necessary to be this consistent, but when translating procedures or manuals, it is more reader-friendly to unify the phrasing. This is also a point to correct during post-editing.
4-4. Terminology
Finally, I would like to point out the "terminology".The red underlined parts above should refer to the same guide, but the translations (in English) have different terms. Such "inconsistency in terminology" can lead to inconsistencies within the content, which may result in a decrease in brand strength. Let's ensure that the terminology is properly aligned during post-editing.
The following are the four key points to keep in mind during post-editing.By making necessary adjustments to these points before sending emails to clients or publishing content, you can improve the accuracy of the translated text. Please give it a try.
5. Summary
Human Science offers post-editing services. In addition to having extensive knowledge and experience in post-editing, Human Science selects post-editors with specialized expertise who can correct not only linguistic mistranslations but also terminology errors, thereby enhancing the quality of machine translation outputs. We have many post-editors who have conducted translation reviews in specialized fields such as "Manufacturing (automotive, machine tools, control equipment, robotics, FA equipment, etc.)", "IT", and "Pharmaceuticals and Medical".
>Human Science | Post-Editing Service
We also offer "MTrans for Trados," a convenient tool for companies that wish to perform post-editing in-house. MTrans for Trados is a machine translation solution developed by our company for corporate clients. By simply installing the plugin, you can utilize machine translation from Google, DeepL, Microsoft, and OpenAI. There is no need to contract with each machine translation service provider. Additionally, it includes features necessary for industrial translation, such as automatic application of terminology and style rules, significantly reducing the workload of post-editing. You can also take advantage of the flat-rate invoicing option that is highly requested by our corporate clients.
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>Neural Machine Translation Integration Solution MTrans for Trados
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