What Translators Need To Know: Machine Translation Post-Editing

 

As mentioned previously, machine translation is becoming an increasingly viable option for professionals seeking economical translation services, one chief reason being the capability of handling large volumes of text in a much shorter time-period. However, machine translation has yet to reach the point of perfection, in that it makes mistakes that are obvious to human readers and lacks the ability to know the context for a particular document (i.e. what a document is going to be used for, how formal the writing needs to be, and so on). Though the worry of being replaced by technology is there, humans who are certified translation providers in Singapore can still find a role to fill in this process, which is handling the task of Machine Translation Post-Editing.

As the name itself explains, Machine Translation Post-Editing (or MTPE) is the act of reviewing the text produced by machine translation. For instance, if a translation company has used machine translation in a legal translation service, they can then bring in a translator (whether in-house or freelance) to appraise and correct it where needed. If such a company wants to retain their reputation from providing certified document translation services in Singapore, they want to ensure that whatever machine translation program they use results in documents free from errors and correct in its usage of terms (legal, technical, and etc).

This is especially the case when the produced document has an important purpose, such as that which comes from a notarized translation. Not only are legal professionals with costly services involved, but the document that is notarized and certified cannot be corrected after the process. A machine translation program neither cares about wasted fees nor loss of reputation, so the duty of ensuring the absolute correctness of the document (and in turn the success of the translation and the future success of the client’s intent for the document) falls to the human translator in Singapore assigned to this task.

In some cases, translators could even be required for the MTPE process simply for the sake of improving machine translation. A company behind a particular machine translation program could have it translate a large randomly selected series of texts, and then bring in translators to either make corrections to the results or to translate lines of text on their own. The company then compares both results (that of the machine translation program and that of the human translators) to see where the program succeeded or failed, how translators improved on what the program produced, and how the program itself can be improved from what has been observed.

Even with machine translation, there are certain aspects of the translation industry that cannot be automated, and the process of improving machine translation can provide roles for human translators to fill. In the meantime, before machine translation is fine-tuned to human (or even superhuman) levels of professional quality, if one requires translation services (such as a PR application translation service), the best options available are still either a certified translator or a certified translation company in Singapore.