Post-editing

A human touch for machine-translated and AI-generated texts

It’s becoming increasingly common for texts to be translated by AI or through neural machine translation (NMT). There are benefits to doing so: it can be a faster, cheaper way to translate large amounts of text, for example. If a translation is intended for a broad audience or if it’s key to your business, however, you want every word to be 100% correct. In those cases, we recommend having the translation post-edited and checked by a professional post-editor. Post-editing machine-translated texts (or ‘PEMT’) tends to require different skills and perspectives than ‘traditional’ translation, because AI and NMT make different kinds of mistakes than human beings do.

3 advantages of professional post-editing

High quality guaranteed

When you’ve spent a lot of time and energy writing a text, you want the translation to be of similarly high quality. Post-editing ensures the translation is flawless.

Text tailored to different markets

A human post-editor understands cultural nuances and can adjust the translation’s tone, style, and choice of words to the needs and preferences of your audience.

Dealing with complex content

Creative texts in particular require post-editing: a human can correctly interpret the text’s context, deal with ambiguities, and make sure the language is consistent throughout the translation.

We offer different levels of post-editing

Level 1 – Simplified post-editing

The editor will keep as much of the machine-translated text as possible.
They’ll correct the most glaring spelling and grammar mistakes and dangling modifiers.
They won’t compare the translation to the source text.

Level 2 – Standard post-editing

The editor will improve the machine-translated text by making more thorough edits in terms of spelling, grammar, inconsistencies, and dangling modifiers.
They’ll also review the terminology used in the machine translation, and compare the translation to the source text.

Level 3 – Full post-editing

This service combines standard post-editing with a thorough additional edit that focuses on:

The style and tone you’re after
Your target audience(s)
The purpose of the text

Once the text has been post-edited, a proofreader will read through it one final time, double-checking that the translation matches the source text and respects your term database. This ensures the right terms are used and the language is consistent.