Post-editing and editing

Artificial intelligence is good, natural intelligence is better

We know that machine translation is a promising technology and we offer post-editing of machine translations (MTPE). Artificial intelligence can be used to translate large volumes of complex technical texts, especially if these follow certain rules and conventions. The output is surprisingly good, too. This is even more the case if huge text and data corpora exist, for example for translations between German and English. AI is faster and cheaper than the human translator, and it delivers quite good results. However, quite good is seldom good enough, and it is safer to rely on a competent post-editor!

Why do we need post-editing?

Texts are written by people for other people. We create content because we want to convey a message and be understood. When we text, we draw from our wealth of knowledge and experience as human beings, and we want to express not only “content”, but also values, emotions and standpoints. A machine has neither the emotions nor the world experience of humans, its understanding of language and communication is limited to the data fed to it. It cannot grasp the emotional dimension and subtlety of language, for example the childhood memories and feelings evoked by the German word “Betthupferl”. AI is incapable of human thinking, it cannot contemplate about an implicit message or a way to express it in another language. What is more, it cannot really understand a text like people do, which makes it unable to detect wrong or meaningless renditions.

At Common Language, skilled human translators provide post-editing of machine translations. With us, you can be certain that your texts are correct, in line with your standards and fulfill their purpose.

Translations made by human translators also sometimes need to be checked by a second language specialist. If you need editing of pre-translated texts, please contact us.