Translation and interpreting agency specialising in post-editing
In today’s world, characterised by globalisation, the meteoric development of the internet and the internationalisation of services, you need to do whatever it takes to secure cheaper and faster services. Post-editing is a solution that meets both these criteria. Machine translation, available free of charge on the internet (Google Translate, Microsoft Bing Translator, DeepL, etc.) produce largely usable linguistic transcriptions. However, no computer can currently replace a human being in the translation process. The results of machine translation are then proofread, corrected and improved by a professional and specialised human translator: this is called post-editing. Swisstranslate provides post-editing services for your professional and personal documents, guaranteeing reliable, fast, high-quality results.
What is post-editing?
The word “edit” means “to prepare (written) material for publication by correcting, condensing or otherwise modifying it.” Post-editing is the process of going back over an automatically pre-translated text to make it intelligible to the reader and linguistically correct. Machine translation has made dazzling progress in recent years, with considerable technological advances. Although human translators remain indispensable, post-editing is a real revolution in the profession, introducing a technological dimension into the translation process.
Post-editing does not mean re-translating everything from scratch, or adding unnecessary stylistic corrections or embellishments. The aim is to correctly render the meaning of the source text so as to remain faithful to the original, while making as few changes as possible. When working on a post-edit, our team has to check the following criteria in particular: consistency and correspondence (misunderstandings), terminology and technical terms, sentence length, spelling, grammar or syntax errors (incorrect agreements, conjugation, etc.), word omissions, word order, idiomatic expressions, punctuation, accents, acronyms and abbreviations.
Machine translation therefore provides a largely usable result. However, it is essential to use a professional linguist to proofread the text and correct any errors, to improve its quality.
Do you need post-editing for your documents?
Advantages of post-editing: lower costs and shorter lead times
Post-editing has the advantage of reducing lead times. Thanks to automatic pre-translation, the language expert saves time, as not every sentence needs to be edited. Productivity is considerably increased, almost doubled: if a linguist can translate around 2,000 words a day, they can increase that to 3,500/4,000 words a day in post-editing. This allows you to receive your translated document in less time, to speed the time-to-market for certain products involving large volumes of translation, for example.
Furthermore, post-editing reduces costs, for the same reasons. The linguist does not need to edit every sentence, so the volume of work is reduced, as is the cost per word. In the context of budget cuts, post-editing can be very interesting.
Why choose our agency for post-editing your documents?
Our teams are made up of over 3,000 language experts who can put their skills to work on your project. At Swisstranslate, we are professional and experienced linguists. We are completely at ease with the spelling, grammar and typographical rules of the target language. We have an informed and accurate view of the types of errors and possible typos caused by machine translation. We are also specialists in particular fields, so we understand the technical terms and idiomatic jargon.
Swisstranslate’s language experts are native speakers of your chosen language, so you can be sure of reliable and professional post-editing. As a result, we have a perfect command of the target language and are familiar with the linguistic mechanisms that enable us to capture all meaning and nuance of your text. We are also punctual, ensuring that your project will be delivered on the date agreed beforehand.
Swisstranslate also attaches great importance to respecting the confidentiality of your data. To achieve this, we use secure software to manage your data, which is hosted in Switzerland and to which only our in-house teams have access. We will delete your project once it has been delivered and sign a confidentiality agreement (NDA) with you. Similarly, the confidentiality of your documents is respected, as all our teams are bound by professional secrecy. They undertake not to reveal any information to which they have access when working on your documents.
Post-editing: processes and areas of expertise
Post-editing can be applied to virtually any field: legal, medical, administrative or technological. Only highly florid or market-orientated documents are not covered, as post-editing is not consistent in these cases. The more creative and idiomatic the text, the worse the machine translation will be and the less use it will be for the translator. On the contrary, post-editing lends itself perfectly to highly technical documents, where style is not the priority.
Once the draft has been received, the document is passed through the translation engine. Depending on the result of the machine translation, the expert is faced with three scenarios:
- If the machine translation is correct and acceptable, no post-editing is required. They can leave the sentences as they are. However, proofreading for improvement is always carried out.
- The machine translation is partially correct. It therefore requires partial post-editing to correct errors or improve the sentences as a whole.
- If the sentence proposed by the automatic translation is completely incorrect and erroneous, the expert must retranslate everything.
Once the necessary changes have been made, the linguist will proceed with the overall harmonisation of the translation, to guarantee an accurate and flawless result. Rely on Swisstranslate for a fast, high-quality service.
- NOS MÉTIERS