Artificial intelligence is advancing in leaps and bounds – and machine translation is keeping pace. Its scope of application is expanding continually.
So why not simply pre-translate texts using DeepL or Google Translate and then just have them “proofread” by a translation agency if you have any specific quality requirements? It should save time and, above all, money – or, at least, so you might think.
But unfortunately, this fails to take account of certain aspects, especially as regards quality. It is often the case that no-one checks in advance to see if a particular text is even suitable for machine translation. For marketing texts, software strings or word lists, machine translation is often not the best choice. It also means that available translations stored in databases and terminology specifications are ignored completely. And consistency cannot be ensured, neither within the text itself nor in comparison with existing translations.
This makes “proofreading” the “translation” a much more laborious business, which, not surprisingly, ends up costing more than initially calculated.
Nor should we forget the important issue of data protection. Texts entered or uploaded on-line are stored on the internet and can be processed for the widest possible variety of purposes. This is generally inappropriate for internal company documents.
So, when it comes to machine translation, why is it better to go straight to a translation agency?
First of all, the translation agency uses protected machine translation (MT) systems, meaning that client data client data are not processed by the respective provider, but remain exclusively under the agency’s control.
It has various options that mean it can influence the machine translation right from the start, and thus already ensure consistency and a higher level of quality, even before the specialist translator carries out the checking (called post-editing in this context). For example, they can start by adopting existing translations from the database. Only then is the machine translation carried out, taking any particular terminology specifications into account, and this is followed by the post-editing process.
The “proofreading” requested by a client, who takes the first route cited above, thus actually corresponds with what is called post-editing. What’s the difference? Proofreading means that a translation created by a human being is checked by a second person (the four-eyes principle). Post-editing, on the other hand, means checking and improving a machine translation. As post-editing generally involves a greater level of research and requires more corrections, the effort involved is greater than with normal proofreading.
Taking the first route can thus lead to higher overall costs. But employing a translation agency from start to finish offers you great advantages, above all, in terms of quality, while making the post-editor’s job a lot easier. It also ensures that data remains protected and costings are transparent.
By Christian Schaller, M.A.
Project Management – medical language service