The translation sector is taking giant steps forward. For some time now, the advances that have been made in terms of providing language services, work tools and process optimization are countless. Today, there is a service for every possible need found in internationalization tasks. We have at our disposal a wide selection of translation software (both desktop and online), and we are more aware of guaranteeing maximum quality in the products we localize. This is due to the fact that our profession has seamlessly integrated technology into its activities, providing clients with the most innovative techniques, which are selected depending on needs, budget and overall conditions. Without a doubt, especially in the last decade, the translation sector has been marked by the use of instant translations generated by smart engines that search among different corpora of previously translated texts. This is called “automatic translation”.
Automatic translation is today’s reality. The main premise of this type of service is truly appealing: translations at a moment’s notice. However, experience has taught us that this resource is far from perfect. The generated translations tend to contain errors that jeopardize the overall quality of the product (consistency, adequacy, terminology and interpretation errors, among others). Therefore, its use cannot be introduced into the market as an accurate translation service applicable to all requirements. In general, it is not possible to validate the use of incorrect translations for informational, legal, scientific or educational purposes. However, this resource is very useful for clients who only need to understand the general gist of a text, one they will not use for an official purpose. This means that automatic translation per se is a service that is offered to specific clients who are duly informed of the product that they will receive and how it can be used.
Professional automatic translation, i.e., a translation that helps reach a quality translation for a variety of legitimate purposes, is achieved through the participation of a professional linguist. This is called “post-editing”. This service consists of a translator reviewing text that has undergone automatic translation so that the final version provided meets the necessary quality criteria mentioned in this article. Many clients are still unaware of this type of innovative service, and it can entail a number of very useful advantages for certain cases. Below we will summarize the positive aspects of post-editing, as well as some of the negative aspects, since this service is not always suitable for a language localization need.
Post-editing an automatic translation is, undoubtedly, a language service with a lower cost. The smaller involvement of the human component and the use of a specific translation engine (these being more or less expensive) means that the total cost falls drastically. This is decisive for many clients or for those who must stay within a specific budget. In addition, the translation can be obtained in a much shorter period of time, since generating the automatic translation is instantaneous. This is then followed by the post-editing process performed by the professional linguist who, if working with a good-quality engine, will have to fix fewer issues and will be able to deliver a reviewed product faster than if they had to start the translation from scratch. In particular, this service is highly recommended when translating very long texts since it is in these cases that greater economic savings are made per word. Therefore, post-editing is an increasingly popular service in the technical sector, where translations are needed for operating manuals, product descriptions and methods of use. Likewise, the intellectual property sector has shown great interest in the use of this resource to localize its patent documents. This is due to the fact that, in these fields, there is a marked predominance of specialized lexicon, technicalities and repetitive structures that translation engines can localize and translate much more easily compared to the turns of phrase of other types of language.
This final aspect leads us to consider the disadvantages of post-editing. The main one is that not all texts are suitable for automatic translation. Publications within the sphere of publicity, literature and any creative text in general cannot be translated using translation engines, which are limited to searching for matches in a pre-existing corpus. These are tasks that require originality, exclusivity and innovation for each specific use and which achieve much more satisfactory results when the services of a human team are employed since they can perform a localization study for the target market. Furthermore, post-editing is not recommended for certain text formats. For example, if we wanted to post-edit a hand-written source text, we would first have to digitize/transcribe it, which would entail an additional cost, and we would lose the savings provided by this resource. Likewise, this service is not recommended for audio and video translation since it requires additional tasks, such as synchronization and character count, which are usually performed by human language specialists, thus increasing the cost. Lastly, it must be taken into account that introducing text into a translation engine normally entails sharing its contents with third parties for the pre-translation. This means that confidentiality concerns must studied.
Post-editing is a growing language service with countless advantages for clients. This is why they must correctly understand its scope and limitations in order to fully leverage their localization projects.
Ref. de la imagen: https://wwwhatsnew.com/2016/07/01/robots-escribiendo-articulos-deportivos-ya-es-realidad-en-associated-press/
