What is MT post-editing?
Post-editing is slowly changing the landscape of the translation industry. But what is it exactly? It is the process by which a translator or a linguist reviews a translation generated by a machine and then corrects it in order to make it intelligible. Depending on the client’s instructions, different types of post-editing can be used. For texts that are not meant to be published or when there is not enough time and only the overall meaning matters, light post-editing can be a solution. For this type of post-editing, only major mistakes that impact the ability to understand the text (mistranslations, omissions, additions, etc.) are corrected. Spelling, grammatical, or punctuation mistakes may not always be corrected, which can be a real challenge for any translator.
For publishable content, full post-editing is the solution; the final text has to be read as though it was written by a human translator. It involves following the client’s terminology, adapting to the source text style and format, keeping consistency, and of course correcting every single mistake that is detected.
