| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Poll: Do you accept post-editing machine translation projects? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Emin Arı 
Türkiye
Local time: 10:13
English to Turkish
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| Absolutely no! | Nov 4, 2015 |
Machine Translation between languages which have same origin, like English and German gives moderate results, to say the least.
However, when it comes to translation between languages which have different origin, like English and Turkish, machine translation is nothing but scrap of words. So, you must translate from the scratch and MT does not help you at all.
As a proof, you may use Google translate from English to Turkish and have a lot of fun with the results as teen... See more Machine Translation between languages which have same origin, like English and German gives moderate results, to say the least.
However, when it comes to translation between languages which have different origin, like English and Turkish, machine translation is nothing but scrap of words. So, you must translate from the scratch and MT does not help you at all.
As a proof, you may use Google translate from English to Turkish and have a lot of fun with the results as teenagers do. ▲ Collapse
| | | | John Cutler
Spain
Local time: 09:13
Spanish to English
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| Been there, done that and the answer's no. | Nov 4, 2015 |
Thayenga wrote:
It is simply not worth my time to "proofread" MT at a lower rate and then end up having to retranslate most of it. To me, such an attempt to receive an almost free translation is inacceptable.
I agree, totally unacceptable. In most cases, it's a skanky practice at best.
| | | | Al Zaid
United States
English to Spanish
+ ...
| I did, recently... | Nov 4, 2015 |
Normally, I wouldn't even think about it, but recently I received a request from a regular client to do an MT proofing job at an acceptable rate and with a promising volume.
That being said, the subject and the discourse of the text were not so complex, so the MT output was not so bad. It did not require so much elaborateness, either. In some segments, I preferred to provide my own translation from scratch, but for many of them I just had to revise.
I would dare to say that English t... See more Normally, I wouldn't even think about it, but recently I received a request from a regular client to do an MT proofing job at an acceptable rate and with a promising volume.
That being said, the subject and the discourse of the text were not so complex, so the MT output was not so bad. It did not require so much elaborateness, either. In some segments, I preferred to provide my own translation from scratch, but for many of them I just had to revise.
I would dare to say that English to Spanish MT is one of the "least worst" of all the language pairs and directions, since Spanish sentence syntax is so flexible, which becomes more complex the other way around. Spanish to English provides a very poor output, so I wouldn't think twice to reject such a proposal.
I would DEFINITELY not accept it for Medical o Legal fields, which are mostly what I do. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | no unless they pay my standard translation rate | Nov 4, 2015 |
this is my point: you think a machine can do my job... well ask the machine to proofread it as well - ah you think that the machine cannot provide a high-quality translation.... what a pity... so you think only a human being can give you a high-quality translation... well my rate for translation is: € ....
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Mario Chavez (X)
Local time: 03:13
English to Spanish
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| MT is just a tool | Nov 4, 2015 |
I agree with our Irish colleague: before you say no to doing PEMT jobs, how much do you really know about MT and PEMT?
I worked for a software company in California doing translation from scratch and PEMT whenever there were previous translations that were processed into a translation memory. It was a very good experience, both professionally and financially. How did I do it?
1) I required a steep hourly rate, which the client accepted. By steep I mean not $20 or... See more I agree with our Irish colleague: before you say no to doing PEMT jobs, how much do you really know about MT and PEMT?
I worked for a software company in California doing translation from scratch and PEMT whenever there were previous translations that were processed into a translation memory. It was a very good experience, both professionally and financially. How did I do it?
1) I required a steep hourly rate, which the client accepted. By steep I mean not $20 or $35 dollars, but much higher.
2) I had final say in the translation and PEMT. Even in the English-to-Spanish pair, I could only use 30-50% of the PEMT on average, and this was no law text but software-related instructions.
3) I was in charge of maintaining and cleaning the translation memory and the glossary (or termbase)
The only bit where this client and I could not see eye to eye is that the latest manager in charge deemed my speed much slower than the rest of the translators: Korean, French, German, Chinese.
So my tenure came to an end after 10 months. To the short list of factors making it possible to work with PEMT successfully, I would add sufficient time for completion. PEMT doesn't necessarily make translation faster, as the translator often has to read the entire thing to make a decision to accept the MT output, rewrite it or modify it to a degree.
Unfortunately, most Silicon Valley managers in charge of software translation are a) clueless about translation and b) poor judges of the translation workflow. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Josef Šoltes
Czech Republic
Local time: 09:13
English to Czech
| Depends, mostly no | Nov 4, 2015 |
Sometimes I do, but it has to be really a good MT. In Czech, that is quite hard to achieve. I met good MT, but that was in one specific field with commonly repeating terms. I don't believe, there is good enough MT for general content in Czech.
| | | | Mario Freitas
Brazil
Local time: 04:13
Member (2014)
English to Portuguese
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| It depends on the source | Nov 4, 2015 |
I have to analyze the document first to determine if it is a Google Translation or similar, in which case, it is a translation and not a post-editing job, whatsoever.
If the client has a decent TM/TB and provides a reasonable pre-translation, then we can negotiate a price somewhere between the revision and the translation rate, provided the technical terms and expressions are mostly pre-translated from their TM/TB, and I won't have to spend a lot of time doing research.
... See more I have to analyze the document first to determine if it is a Google Translation or similar, in which case, it is a translation and not a post-editing job, whatsoever.
If the client has a decent TM/TB and provides a reasonable pre-translation, then we can negotiate a price somewhere between the revision and the translation rate, provided the technical terms and expressions are mostly pre-translated from their TM/TB, and I won't have to spend a lot of time doing research.
This is was should be called post-editing, not a regular machine translation. Translators who accept Google Translations or similar as post-editing jobs are a disaster to our market. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Answering Gallagy | Nov 4, 2015 |
Gallagy wrote:
I don't really understand why so many people are so sniffy about MT. Are people afraid to admit they post-edit MT? Or is it just that people don't accept proofing jobs of any description?
I don't think that I am "sniffy" about MT. I don't have any attitude about it either way. I look at each job individually. I ran into this kind of work only twice. The first time it was a defined post-edit job. I examined the text as I would examine any translated work and found that so much work would have to be done to correct the errors and syntax, that it would take longer than translating it from scratch. It was also very unpleasant work. So I declined the work.
The second time an end client had sent his "translation" to an agency hoping to save money, and the agency sent it to me asking whether I could edit this work. It read quite strangely so I thought someone had translated word for word using a dictionary but had a poor command of the English language. On a hunch I took the German, put it through Google Translate, and came up with a duplicate of the "translation" in front of me. I told that to the agency who said "Oh, we forgot to tell you - the client put it through MT."
In both cases the material I looked at was of such low quality that it would have been a time-consuming head-ache to fix. Had I been sent something of quality, I would have gladly edited it at my usual per hour fee. I'm not sniffy about anything - work is work.
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Mario Chavez (X)
Local time: 03:13
English to Spanish
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| PEMT is contingent on the MT engine being used | Nov 5, 2015 |
Maxi Schwarz wrote: Gallagy wrote:
I don't really understand why so many people are so sniffy about MT. Are people afraid to admit they post-edit MT? Or is it just that people don't accept proofing jobs of any description? I don't think that I am "sniffy" about MT. I don't have any attitude about it either way. I look at each job individually. I ran into this kind of work only twice. The first time it was a defined post-edit job. I examined the text as I would examine any translated work and found that so much work would have to be done to correct the errors and syntax, that it would take longer than translating it from scratch. It was also very unpleasant work. So I declined the work. The second time an end client had sent his "translation" to an agency hoping to save money, and the agency sent it to me asking whether I could edit this work. It read quite strangely so I thought someone had translated word for word using a dictionary but had a poor command of the English language. On a hunch I took the German, put it through Google Translate, and came up with a duplicate of the "translation" in front of me. I told that to the agency who said "Oh, we forgot to tell you - the client put it through MT." In both cases the material I looked at was of such low quality that it would have been a time-consuming head-ache to fix. Had I been sent something of quality, I would have gladly edited it at my usual per hour fee. I'm not sniffy about anything - work is work.
So those two jobs were unpleasant, Maxi. I understand that.
However, MT output (whether it's usable or garbage) depends entirely on a series of factors:
1) The machine translation engine (or program) being used
2) The quality and level of customization introduced in the MT engine (you can call them the rules on which the MT engine operates)
3) The quality of the bilingual text being fed into the MT so that the MT engine learns to translate based on its rules
The free version of Google Translate is free because it's a basic, low-quality MT engine.
| | | | ikeda45
Local time: 16:13
Member (2007)
English to Japanese
| MT is useless | Nov 5, 2015 |
because Japanese is far more subtle and complicated than other languages.
| | | | Mario Chavez (X)
Local time: 03:13
English to Spanish
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| Let's think for a moment | Nov 5, 2015 |
ikeda45 wrote:
because Japanese is far more subtle and complicated than other languages.
Have you used MT for any significant period of time, or are you offering an unsubstantiated claim?
| | | | Katrin Bosse (X)
Germany
Local time: 09:13
Dutch to German
+ ...
| Doing translations at proofreading rates is just not economically feasible for me | Nov 5, 2015 |
Thayenga wrote:
It is simply not worth my time to "proofread" MT at a lower rate and then end up having to retranslate most of it. To me, such an attempt to receive an almost free translation is inacceptable.
I very much agree!
A proofreading/editing assignment that is essentially a translation assignment because of the poor text quality, must be paid at a translation rate. Unfortunately, that's not what agencies (in my experience) are willing to pay.
So: no.
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