What Exactly Is Post-Editing?

To know, with all certainty, that you’re receiving the best translation possible from your LSP, it’s vital that you understand the translation process and terminologies, at least on a basic level. One term many professionals aren’t familiar with is “post-editing.” Here’s a bit more about it, to help you understand your translation project and its process.

Post-editing is something commonly confused with proofreading. They’re confused, and thought to be interchangeable terms, because they both take place toward the end of the translation process.

Both proofreading and post-editing are finishing touches put on a translation project.

The thing to note is that your translator should definitely proofread, however, post-editing is not a mandatory part of every process.

Proofreading, Defined

Proofreading is intended to spot any potential typos, inaccuracies or mistakes within the translation. It is performed on the “almost-ready” version of your translation, and most typically, you want your proofreader’s job to be an easy one. If they spot several issues within the project, it’s because your translator may have had some trouble bringing your project from source to target language, and that may be an issue.

Post-Editing, Defined

This is a practice strongly tied to machine translation. It’s typically performed on the automatic translations generated by the machine translation, and should be a process that is a lot more in-depth than a standard proofing job. This is so, simply because MTs are less thorough, and generally contain more errors than a human translation.

If your language service provider is using machine translation on your project, you should definitely ensure they’re using BOTH post-editing and proofreading on your finished project.

Generally, the difference is in the pre-assumption of the correctness of each individual translation. With post-editing, proofreading, and a team of ITC Global Translations’ finest, you can reach a high-quality translation.

Contact us today for more information about our translation processes, team members and to receive a free quote about your translation project.