What is Machine Translation Post Editing (MTPE)?

Why is MTPE important?

Levels of MTPE

Languages where MTPE is the most effective

MTPE Workflow

Machine Translation Post Editing vs. Human Translation: Which option should you choose?

MTPE Pricing

iTransling’s Tips

                                                                                                                                                                                                           

What is Machine Translation Post Editing?

MTPE stands for Machine Translation Post Editing and it is the process of editing and reviewing the translations generated by machines. In a previous blog, we highlighted the AI-powered translation and how it became advanced in translating simple and general texts. The translations made by AI-powered platforms can’t be trusted and need human supervision. Thus, MTPE service has been created; it combines the speed of machines and accuracy of humans.

Why is MTPE important?

MTPE has become very essential and important for the translation industry. It has many advantages for both translators and clients, which can be summarized as follows:

• Cost and Time Effectiveness

  Human translators exert less effort and time for reviewing machine translations. This is because AI-powered platforms produce a draft instantly and human translators correct errors and review the general quality of translation within a short timeframe. Accordingly, projects can be completed quicker and with lower costs.

• Ideal for Repetitive Content and Simple Texts

  MTPE is highly-demanded for standard template content, such as contracts and technical manuals, and for simple texts, such as emails and social media posts.

• Quality Improvement

  MTPE helps to enhance the translation quality through adding the human touch and refining the translated text to ensure it is free from errors or missing parts. Even if legal simple repetitive texts, such as contracts, can be translated by AI-powered translation platforms, the quality of translation can’t be trusted. Any small mistake can cause misunderstanding and consequently disastrous consequences. Accordingly, MTPE is essential to ensure the accuracy, clarity, and human supervision.

Levels of MTPE

There are two levels of MTPE described as follows:

• Light Post-Editing (LPE)

Through LPE, a human editor corrects grammatical mistakes and misunderstanding and make sure that the translated text is clear and readable. However, a human editor doesn’t focus on improving the style. Light Post-Editing is a good option for informal content and is cheaper, but it doesn’t produce a natural human translation.

• Full Post-Editing (FPE)

Full Post-Editing is demanded for critical texts, such as legal, medical, and technical materials. Through this service, human editors ensure the fluency, accuracy, and natural flow of translation. Therefore, they correct grammatical, syntactical, and punctuation errors and fix any terminology inconsistency and cultural nuances. Full Post-Editing is slower and more expensive, but it delivers high-quality translation.

Languages Suitable for MTPE

The effectiveness of MTPE depends on the pair of languages. Definitely, MTPE is more effective with a specific pair of languages than others due to many reasons, such as linguistic structure, language complexity, and volume of stored data. The languages can be classified according to the effectiveness of MTPE as follows:

High Effect

English <> French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Italian

Moderate Effect

English<> Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish

Low Effect

English <> Korean, Persian, Hindi, Thai, and Vietnamese

 

MTPE Workflow

MTPE passes through four phases as follows:

• Preparation of Source Text

During this phase, a translator ensures that the document is editable and clear of any ambiguities which may affect or confuse the AI-powered translation platform.

• AI-powered Translation

A ready text will be uploaded on an AI-powered translation platform, such as (ChatGPT, Deeple, or Google Translate).

• Post Editing

Based on the client’s requirements, a human translator will start editing the translated text; either as light post-editing or full post-editing.

• Quality Assurance

This step is the secret ingredient for both human translation and MTPE. During this process (QA), a human translator fixes any grammatical mistakes, missing parts, misunderstanding, and ambiguity and gives the human touch that makes the translated text consistent and natural.

 Machine Translation Post Editing vs. Human Translation: Which option should you choose?

Clients may ask themselves why they choose the human translation which is more expensive and slower while there is MTPE option which is cheaper and quicker. In fact, human translation can’t be replaced with MTPE; especially when you need to translate complex and crucial texts, such as multinational agreements, international conventions, court and arbitration cases, and technical documents. Any mistranslation in such documents will definitely cause serious consequences. Although the AI is making a great advancement in the translation industry, it still can’t surpass the human intelligence and creativity.

In conclusion, iTransling gives you the answer of question: “Which option should you choose?” If precision and creativity are important, you must choose humans. If speed and limited budget matter more than the perfection, go for MTPE.

MTPE Pricing

The MTPE is priced according to several factors, such as language pair, content complexity, required level of accuracy, and turnaround time. In addition, prices are specified per word, per hour, or per page.

The average rates of MTPE vary as per the required level of post-editing as follows:

Light Post-Editing:

Per page (250 words): 50% lower than the rates of human translation

Full Post-Editing:

Per page (250 words): 30% lower than the rates of human translation

iTransling’s Tips

As an experienced agency that provides human translation and MTPE for many languages, we provide our clients with the following tips before deciding to use MTPE or human translation.

• Define your requirements: As a client, you are aware of the required level of accuracy and perfection you need. Accordingly, you can decide whether you need light post-editing, full post-editing, or pure human translation.
• Provide glossaries and style guides: A client can ask our team to apply specific terminology and make it consistent at the level of a document. This helps the editors to process your project quickly and delivers consistent text.
• Make your decision based on your content: iTransling advices you not to be impressed by cheap and speed AI-powered translation platforms. You can get your project completed within a limited turnaround time, but you have to care about the precision and perfection. Be careful when you are going to translate a legal complex document such as court cases, arbitration memorandum, or international contract. A mistranslation of a single word may cost you a lot.

Conclusion

Finally, it is now easy for you to make a decision about which option you should choose. For speed, limited budget, and informal simple documents, you can go for MTPE. If the quality, precision, consistency, and natural-sound tone matter, you have to choose human translation even if it is costly. Always remember that mistranslation will cost you more than what you can save through MTPE.