What is Post-editing?

Post-editing is the process by which a human translator reviews, corrects, and improves a machine-generated translation output. It consists of more than one stage. The translator first reads the source text and then reads the machine translated raw text. After comparing the two texts, the translator works on the machine translation output and makes the necessary edits. Special attention is paid to the linguistic, cultural, and technical elements of the text, such as spelling, punctuation, grammar, text-type, idioms, terminology, product and brand names, readability, international and country standards, cultural references, units of measurement, style, tone, and voice.

There are two types of post-editing:

Light post-editing: The focus is on eliminating remarkable errors so as to provide a readable text.

Full post-editing: The machine translation output is examined in detail. An accurate and consistent text is produced in terms of meaning, context, and style. The goal is to improve and enhance the quality of machine translation output.

Machine translation does what it is taught to do; however, human translators bridge the gap between two different languages and cultures. Human translators help the target audience internalize the text. Human translators know how to make inferences and feel the spirit of the text. The speed of machine translation combined with the skill, expertise, and attention of human translators creates a perfect translation in the post-editing process.