With the increasing demand for fast and accurate translations, post-editing machine translations has become popular. Yet many organisations overlook the benefits of pre-editing source text before it gets to the machine translation stage.
Pre-editing is an opportunity to optimise machine translation workflows. By following best practices and tailoring pre-editing to each project, businesses can get more accurate, consistent, and culturally relevant translations.
What is pre-editing?
Pre-editing means preparing the source text before it goes into a machine translation system. This step is key to improving the quality of the first machine translation output and reducing post-edit time.
Machine translation pre-editing tips
- Simplify language: Use plain language with standardised terminology to help machines produce more accurate translations. Avoid complex sentence structures and ambiguous phrases to reduce errors.
- Be consistent: Consistent use of terms and phrases in the source text will produce more uniform translations. Pre-editors should make sure the source material follows a controlled language or style guide.
- Resolve ambiguities: Resolving ambiguities in the source text before translation will prevent machines from misinterpreting. This might mean clarifying pronoun references, disambiguating homonyms, or adding context where necessary.
- Consider culture: Pre-editing can also mean adapting content to the target culture which will help machines produce translations that are more culturally relevant and easier to post-edit.
What is machine translation post-editing?
Getting the most out of pre-editing
To get the most from machine translation, pre-editing should be seen as part of the translation process, not as an optional extra. By investing time and effort in refining the source text before it goes into the machine translation system, organisations can improve translation quality, reduce post-edit workload, and increase overall efficiency.
Get in touch to discuss your pre and post machine translation editing needs.
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