A modern translation technology
between euphoria and distrust
Purchasing departments are excited. Specialist departments fight back vehemently. Some expect fabulous savings potential. At the same time, others fear a huge drop in quality. One thing is for sure: Everyone is talking about machine translation and post-editing.
The myth of savings potential
Can you get a professional translation on the cheap?
No, machine translation does not reduce your translation costs to virtually zero overnight. These long hoped for expectations cannot become a reality due to several factors:
- Only part of your content can be processed using machine translation. We will first use the content from your translation memories (TM). The larger your TMs, the less need there will be for machine translation.
- We can train your own, tailor-made MT engine. The basis that we use for this, however, is a so-called corpus, which is a very extensive translation memory with flawless language and terminological usage.
- You still must invest a lot of effort in data preparation.
- Machine translation is only as good as your source texts. Machine translation requires a lot of discipline in order to deliver constant, reliable quality. Uniform source texts and clear language that avoids complex locutions are just as necessary as rigorously correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Otherwise, the results of machine translation will have to be revised during a complex post-editing stage. This will often result in costs that are higher than the expected savings.
- If your source texts are not optimally written or prepared for machine translation, then pre-editing will be required. Our language experts will optimize your content during pre-editing. This ensures that machine translation produces an optimal result. Here, too, there are additional costs.
The myth of loss of quality
Is machine translation a bottom-feeding language service?
No, a machine translation does not necessarily mean a poor-quality technical translation. The results of machine translation can be quite impressive.
To achieve this, however, you must satisfy a few conditions:
- Your source texts must be flawless. Machine translation is totally unforgiving when it comes to any grammatical, spelling, or punctuation errors.
- Ideally, you should also take into account the rules of writing copy that is optimized for translation.
- In the best case scenario, you should use trained MT engines.
- Never skip professional post-editing in accordance with ISO 18587. Do you only need to convey the gist of the content of your text? Or is the translation going to be shared with patients or users? Are you planning to publish it? In this case, a light post-editing is often sufficient.
mt-g: Your reliable partner
for machine translation in the medical field
Machine translation & post-editing can be fruitfully used in the medical field without fear so long as you have realistic expectations. Our professional post-editors are specialists in the field of medical translation. Thanks to our precise post-processing, you will get a result that is in no way inferior to human translation.
From pure post-editing of already machine-translated texts to machine translation & post-editing from a single source, together we will develop a tailor-made solution for your project. In this way, you benefit by getting the most out from machine translation while maintaining the same quality that you would expect from a human translation.
