Post-editing tools that can also streamline Japanese-English machine translation

Human Science has released a new product specialized in supporting post-editing work in Trados, called "MTrans Post-Edit Booster" (hereinafter referred to as "PE Booster").

PE Booster is an automatic replacement solution that allows users to easily and freely configure settings. You can define common incorrect expressions found in machine translation and their corrections.

As a result, the tedious task of correcting the same errors multiple times during post-editing will be reduced, allowing post-editors to work more comfortably.

The introduction page for PE Booster and the previous blog post highlight common errors that often occur when translating from English to Japanese, but PE Booster is also helpful for translations from Japanese to English.

In this article, we will introduce how to utilize PE Booster in Japanese-English translation.

Table of Contents:

1. Three Key Points for Utilizing MTrans Post-Edit Booster

　1-1. Smartly Correcting English Grammar Mistakes

　1-2. Remove unnecessary spaces in URLs and paths

　1-3. Replace commonly mistranslated proper nouns

2. You can share the PE Booster configuration file with team members, making collaboration seamless!

1. Three Key Points for Utilizing MTrans Post-Edit Booster

1. Smartly Correcting English Grammar Mistakes

In Google Translate, there is a very high probability that "cannot" is translated as "can not".

In the above example, "can not" is grammatically incorrect, and the correct form is "cannot."

●Search string: can not

●Replacement string: cannot

By defining it this way, you can avoid making the same corrections multiple times.

2. Remove unnecessary spaces in the URL or path

If there are unnecessary spaces in the URL or path that becomes a link, the link will not function.

In the above example, the standard Google Translate output contains 6 unnecessary spaces before and after the backslash. This means that 6 spaces need to be removed during post-editing.

This single sentence is sufficient, but in some cases, there may be content where URLs or paths appear multiple times. While removing spaces, there is also a possibility of accidentally deleting necessary characters.

●Search string: *\ *

●Replacement string: \

By defining it this way, the spaces before and after the backslash are always removed.

With PE Booster, you can also perform search and replace using regular expressions, allowing for flexible configurations.

3. Replace commonly mistranslated proper nouns

Some companies may have rules regarding the capitalization of their English company names (e.g., all uppercase letters for the English company name).

In this case,

●Search String: Human Science

●Replacement String: HUMAN SCIENCE

By setting it this way, it will always be displayed in uppercase.

Additionally, when product names are written in Katakana, the expected terms in the translation may not be applied. For example, in the second example sentence, if you want to capitalize the "b" in "PE booster."

●Search term: PE booster

●Replacement String: PE Booster

By setting this, it will always be displayed with the correct English product name.

Furthermore, machine translation generally assigns common translations to commonly used phrases and expressions. For example, if the English name for the "sales department" within the company is "business development department," Google Translate will most often translate "sales department" as "sales department."

●Search string: sales (department|dept)

●Replacement String: business development department

By defining it this way, even if the "Sales Department" is mistakenly translated by machine translation as "sales department" or "sales dept", it will be represented with the official English department name.

2. You can share the PE Booster configuration file with team members, making collaboration seamless!

Above, I have listed three points as examples of utilization.

With PE Booster, users can freely set the search string and its replacement string. Regular expressions can also be used. Therefore, if any concerning errors catch your eye, you can flexibly change the settings.

Furthermore, you can export/import the settings, allowing you to share replacement setting files within the team. This can help reduce the overall workload for the team and ensure consistency in expressions.

If you are using Trados and have concerns during post-editing, or if you are considering introducing machine translation, please consider MTrans Post-Edit Booster.

For more details about MTrans Post-Edit Booster, please see here.

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