Re-thinking Machine Translation Post-Editing Guidelines

Abstract

Machine Translation Post-Editing (MTPE) is a challenging task. It frequently creates tension between what the industry expects in terms of quality and what translators are willing to deliver as an end product. Conventional approaches to MTPE take as a point of departure the distinction between light and full MPTE, but the division gets blurred when implemented in an actual MTPE project where translators find difficulties in differentiating between essential and preferential changes. At the time MTPE guidelines were designed, the role of the human translator in the MT process was perceived as ancillary, a view inherited from the first days of MT research aiming at the so-called Fully Automatic High Quality Machine Translation (FAHQMT). My proposal challenges the traditional division of MTPE levels and presents a new way of looking at MTPE guidelines. In view of the latest developments in neural machine translation and the higher quality level of its output, it is my contention that the traditional division of MTPE levels is no longer valid. In this contribution I advance a proposal for redefining MTPE guidelines in the framework of an ecosystem specifically designed for this purpose.