For us at The Post-Editors, the quality of the end result is always our top priority. But which aspects influence the post-editing results? The quality of post-edited texts depends on various factors. We have summarised the most important ones here:

Quality of the source text

A well-structured, error-free source text is the basis for a high-quality machine translation. Errors, ambiguities or complex expressions in the source text are often carried over into the machine translation and make post-editing even more difficult. That is why it is important that source texts are carefully edited and checked before translation. This is the only way to avoid misunderstandings and translation errors from the outset.

Choice of translation engine

The translation engine used has a significant influence on the output quality of the machine translation. Generic engines often deliver poorer results than specialised or trained engines for specific subject areas or text types. Many translation service providers therefore use several different engines in order to find the optimum solution for each text type. Neural translation models that have been trained on large volumes of data now also deliver very good results.

Text type and subject area

The quality of machine translation can vary considerably depending on the type of text and specialism. Technical, legal or literary texts are more demanding than general texts and require more input during post-editing. However, specialised vocabulary, complex sentence structures and cultural peculiarities also pose major challenges for the systems. This is where our post-editors, who have in-depth specialist knowledge and a feel for language, come into their own.

Language direction

Some language directions are easier for machine translation systems to process than others. This has an impact on the output quality and the post-editing input. Generally speaking, translations from English into other languages usually deliver better results than vice versa. Machine translation also often works better between similar languages, such as Spanish and Italian, than between languages with very different structures, such as English and Japanese.

Scope of post-editing

We make a distinction between “light” and “full” post-editing. Full post-editing delivers significantly higher quality, but also requires more effort. With light post-editing, only the most serious errors are corrected in order to keep costs down. Full post-editing, on the other hand, completely harmonises the translation with the target text and adapts it to the style and terminology. Which approach to choose depends on the intended use of the text – for example, a higher quality is more important for marketing texts than for internal working documents.

The post-editor’s qualifications

The post-editor’s skills, experience and care make a big difference to the final quality. Good post-editors need to know the strengths and weaknesses of machine translations. They must be able to recognise and correct errors without disrupting the style. They also need in-depth knowledge of the target language and the specialist field. Only then will they be able to can adapt the translation to the target culture and create a fluent, natural text.

Terminology guidelines and style guides

Compliance with terminology specifications, style guides and customer-specific requirements is essential for high quality post-editing. After all, every customer has different ideas about style and tone. Some prefer a more formal style of writing, others a more casual one. It is also often necessary to make sure the specified terminology is used. Ultimately, our post-editors need to know and be able to implement these customer requirements if they are to produce a text that is perfectly tailored to the target group.

To achieve optimum quality, all these factors need to be carefully considered. Close co-operation between the customer, translation agency and post-editors is therefore the key to success. Only when everyone involved pulls in the same direction and understands the specifics of the project in question can post-edited texts of the highest calibre be produced.

References:

https://www.e-kern.com/de/uebersetzen/post-editing

https://www.kothes.com/blog/post-editing

https://cruzcommunications.com/uebersetzungen/maschinelle-uebersetzung-und-post-editing

https://swissglobal.ch/blog/was-wird-in-einem-machine-translation-post-editing-verbessert

https://www.acolad.com/de/leistungen/uebersetzung/machine-translation-quality.html