At Gudmann Translations, Machine Translation Post-Editing, AKA MTPE or PEMT, refers to the correction and adaptation of output coming from sources like translation machines, AI, and neural translation tools, like Google Translate and DeepL. Having more than 9 years of experience with this type of revision work, I offer this service on an hourly or per-word basis from English, Spanish, German, Norwegian, and Swedish to Danish.
Why Post-Editing is necessary
Post-editing of machine translations entails several different processes and, among other things, like good spelling, grammatical and linguistic skills, it requires a good eye for detail. Some of the things that these machines have a hard time perfecting is consistency (they will often write a hodgepodge of different terms to refer to the same item), using the wrong terms for the specific context, and adhering to specific style requirements of the client concerning e.g. the tone of voice or target audience. Especially presentations (Powerpoint) or other media with headlines, graphics, and captions with little immediate context are very challenging for AI. And sometimes the text even sounds right in the target language but it actually doesn’t correspond to what the source was trying to say. It’s also worth noting that if the AI doesn’t have the right answer it simply makes one up!
Correcting AI content or machine translation output requires terminology insight and research capabilities as well as a focused, diligent approach with profound knowledge of the target language. For a summarized list of my previous subject matter experience, have a look here.
Apart from spotting obvious and not so obvious mistakes in the source text (e.g. that the wrong year is used the second time, a name has been spelled wrong, or the fact that there are only 3 items in the bullet list which was introduced as a 4 item list), a professional translator will also be able to make sure that the text in its entirety makes sense and works for the intended purpose to fulfill your needs.
Some clients in a big international corporation just want to be able to get the gist of the text, for internal use, (so-called Light MTPE) whereas others want a full-fledged translation that sounds like it was written by a human (Full MTPE). Whatever your need and whatever machine you use, just let me know what I can do for you.
