There is a lot of misinformation about the quality of Machine Translation (MT) and the perception is that it is of low quality and not a good translation solution. This perception was primarily driven from bad experiences people had when Google first introduced MT. At that time, Google was still in the beta phase and the problem was, that they did not tell people that it was a work in progress. Or, if they did, the message got lost. Since then, Google Translation has gotten better and is constantly being improved. MT alone still has it’s disadvantages. While MT is good for translating 3-4 words of factual information, it does not have the ability put things in context, impair situational knowledge or express emotion.
MT + Human Post Editing (MTPE) is an excellent translation solution. It produces professional human-quality translations due to the human editor’s ability to massage and revise the MT into meaningful localized content. The editor has the situational, market and cultural knowledge necessary to ensure that the company’s message or product/service information is accurately communicated within the international market. MT alone can not.
