Note:

The author of this website used a controlled language in order to write this text in the German language. In a second step, a machine translation system translated the German text into the English language. Finally, a human translator corrected the translation mistakes of the machine translation software. The correction process required considerably less time than a traditional human translation process.

Topics:

• Machine translation software is an interesting technology for human translators.

• Machine translation software allows the translation of more text in less time.

• Machine translation software allows the reduction of translation costs.

Machine translation software is an interesting technology for human translators.

It is a fact: Machine translation software can translate a text very quickly. The question is: Is this machine translation perfect? And the answer is: Machine translations are not always perfect. But human translators can quickly correct mistakes in a machine translation. This website demonstrates how human translators can use machine translation software in order to improve the translation process.

Machine translation software allows the translation of more text in less time.

Without translation software, human translators can translate approximately 3000 words per day. But the same translators can produce thousands of words more when they edit a machine translation. In other words: Human translators can use machine translation software in order to produce a first draft of the translation. After that, human translators correct the mistakes in the machine translation. The extent of these corrections depends on the requirements of the customer.

Examples:

• If the customer requires only a translation for information, then the human translator only corrects mistakes that affect the meaning of the text.

• If the customer requires a standard translation, then the human translator corrects all terminological mistakes and all grammatical mistakes in the machine translation.

Human translators may increase their productivity drastically in both cases. With an appropriate source text, human translators can edit more than 5000 words of machine translations per day.

Note:

This example is based on projects that the author of this website conducted. Some projects are not suitable for processing with a machine translation system.

Machine translation software allows the reduction of translation costs.

How many languages are spoken in the world? More than 6000. How many documents have been translated into more than 100 languages? You may count those projects with the fingers of one hand. And what is the most important reason that prevents the translation of a document into all the languages that would benefit from translation? The high cost of translation! Human translators who use machine translation software can offer many alternatives to their clients.

Examples:

• Machine translation, where the human translator corrects only terminological mistakes.

• Machine translation, where the human translator corrects terminological mistakes and grammatical mistakes.

• Machine translation, where the human translator corrects terminological mistakes, grammatical mistakes and stylistic mistakes.

A machine translation with human correction is typically considerably less expensive than a traditional human translation.

Note:

Some projects are not suitable for processing with a machine translation system.