Machine Translation has revolutionized the translation industry. It is being used in producing technical translation services for many years. Do you want to know why? This is because, in technical translations, human emotions are not involved. With time machine translation has improved. At present, MT is producing seamless translation results that don’t require any editing. 

There is no doubt in the fact that MT has become more accurate with time but machine translations cannot compete with a translation that is produced by human translators. It can help in dealing with a large amount of data. Moreover, it has a translation method called machine translation post-editing, MTPE services which are in-built on MT. This method includes pre-translating the text with the help of a machine translation system.  A human translator edits the target text. It depends upon your project whether you should opt for machine translation or machine translation post-editing.

Different Types of Machine Translation

To make a decision about which machine translation to use,  you should know the type of machine translation. Let us dive into the types of machine translation.  

Statistical Machine Translation SMT   

Statistical machine translation depends upon bilingual corpora. It uses the source and text language to come up with statistical models. These models define what should be the accurate translation of the source and target language. The disadvantage of SMT is that it considers the context of the data in the account. Therefore, professional technical translation services can produce seamless results. 

Neural Machine Translation NMT 

Neural machine translation is a modified form of MT. It is making progress with time. Many professional translation agencies are using it in their daily operations. Neural machine translation translates the data using neural networks. Neural machine translation services are getting popularity because it provides better results in different language pairs. Thus, it is the most advanced form of machine translation. However, it still has some flaws like mistranslations. It happens when the target text looks very natural. In such cases, it becomes very hard to find problems when going for post-editing. 

Rule-Based Machine Translation RBMT 

Rule-based machine translation relies on grammatical rules to produce seamless translation output. It considers the grammatical structures of both the source and target language to do the translation. The sentence composition is grammatically correct and understandable. However, they still require proofreading, and editing and require close attention to details by a human translator.   

Hybrid Machine Translation

Hybrid means a combination of two. Thus the Hybrid machine translation uses a combination of the statistical and rule-based types of MT. The amalgamation of these two models provides the best quality results but still, human editing is required to check the authenticity of the translated version. 

Machine Translation Post-Editing 

Machine translation post-editing MTPE is a method where already translated a human translator edits text. It is increasingly getting popularity and provides the best combination between machine and human translation. One of the foremost benefits of MTPE is that it also considers the text in view in the editing process. 

Benefits of Machine Translation Post Editing 

Machine translation post-editing provides many advantages as compared to solo human translation. Let us have a look at it. 

It Saves Time 

When compared to human translation, MTPE is 350% more productive. The report by Oneword revealed that a human translator can translate around 2000 words per day. However, with the help of machine translation post-editing, the translation output can grow up to 7000 words in a single day.

Deals with a Large Amount of Data  

The translation agencies come across a large volume of translation projects. These projects need a translation in fast turnaround time. MTPE is a viable option for such projects but the type of text and target audience should be kept in view. 

Whether to Post-edit or Not to Post-edit 

You must be wondering whether to go for machine translation services solely or to go for post-edit the machine-translated text. To find the answer, you must know how much post-editing is required. Sometimes, you just need the gist of the text. In such a case, it is not rational to post-edit your translation output. In other cases, where there is no issue of readability light post-editing is required. To decide between the both you must be clear about the following things.

What is Your Intended Audience 

You must know what is your target audience. If you are translating a text that is only required by a small group of people then it is necessary to understand the context and the basics of the text. Such data don’t require editing. However, slight proofreading can work. 

On the contrary, when you are handling content that is specific and is required by a large group of people, then you must produce authentic translation results. For this reason, you must take the assistance of human translators. In this case, post-editing and proofreading both are required to create your target text. 

How Accurate Your Text Should be? 

The level of difficulty and accuracy varies among the translation projects. This factor can determine the amount of post-editing. You should have a thorough understanding of the text. If you want basic words to be understood then you should opt for MT only. For professional technical translation services, this option is valid.

On the other hand, if you want the translated version, grammatically correct then you should opt for light editing. In addition, if the content is required for a large audience and resembles that it is specially written for the target audience then you should go for full post-editing. You should know the type of text to determine the editing which is needed. 

Wrapping Up 

To select the type of machine translation, you must know the type of content and your target audience. It will surely help you in deciding which option to choose between machine translation and machine-translation post-editing.