June 18, 2025
Have you ever needed a large number of documents translated quickly? Let’s say you do, and you call up a translation services company to do the job.
You brace yourself to hear how much it would cost, but you find yourself pleasantly surprised not only at the price in the quote but also at the projected turnaround time. But how is this possible?
This situation is possible if what you’re being offered is machine translation post-editing or MTPE.
Machine Translation Post-Editing (MTPE) is a hybrid translation method that combines the speed of machine translation (MT) with the precision of human editing. In this process, a text is first translated by an AI translation engine, then refined by a professional human editor to improve clarity, accuracy, and contextual relevance.
Also known as Post-Editing of Machine Translation (PEMT), MTPE is the preferred term across the language services industry.
This approach offers the best of both worlds:
Speed and cost-efficiency from automated translation
Fluency, tone, and precision from human revision
Initial Translation: A machine translation engine generates a rough draft of the text.
Human Post-Editing: A skilled linguist edits the output to fix grammar, mistranslations, terminology inconsistencies, and awkward phrasing.
Final Review: Depending on the level of post-editing (light or full), additional revisions may be made to ensure the translation reads naturally, aligns with brand voice, and meets cultural expectations.
One might consider MTPE a hybrid, or even a cyborg solution to the problem of high demand in the translation industry. MTPE blends both human skill and machine efficiency to provide a solution that is quick and cost-effective while maintaining a certain standard for the quality of the result.
Machine Translation Post-Editing (MTPE) comes in two main forms: light and full post-editing. These options offer different levels of quality, speed, and cost depending on the intended use of the translation. Understanding the distinction helps users set realistic expectations and choose the best fit for their needs.
Neither side is necessarily wrong. Different kinds of post-editing have different results. Language service providers generally agree that there are two types of post-editing services:
• Light post-editing
• Full post-editing
The primary goal of light post-editing focuses on making machine-translated text clear and understandable. Editors correct basic grammar errors and fix unclear or inaccurate phrases without fully rewriting the content. While the quality may not match human translation, it offers significantly faster turnaround—up to 40% quicker—and can reduce costs by up to 60%, making it ideal for internal communications or short-term use.
Full post-editing takes a more comprehensive approach by refining the text to sound natural and professionally translated. Editors enhance tone, style, and terminology accuracy while ensuring consistency throughout the document. Studies show this method reduces editing time by up to 63% and results in fewer keystrokes and pauses—making it highly effective for client-facing, legal, or technical content where cultural and linguistic nuance is critical.
Read more: The Art of Translation: A Deep Dive into Light vs. Full Post-Editing
Machine Translation Post-Editing (MTPE) combines the speed of AI with the precision of human editing. This hybrid approach makes it ideal for organizations managing high-volume, multilingual content. Here’s why MTPE stands out:
MTPE reduces translation expenses by using AI for the first draft. Human editors only step in for refinement, which significantly cuts down on labor hours. This makes professional language service providers more affordable and scalable for businesses of all sizes.
Machine-generated drafts allow for rapid initial translation, especially for large volumes of content. Human editors then refine the output, resulting in a streamlined workflow. The overall process shortens turnaround times without sacrificing quality.
Machine translation engines are particularly effective at applying consistent terminology across documents. This is especially useful for technical, legal, or branded content. Human editors ensure the final output aligns with tone, formatting, and glossary standards.
MTPE makes it easy to manage multilingual projects across multiple markets. AI handles the bulk of the translation workload, freeing human editors to focus on polishing and adapting. This allows businesses to expand globally without overwhelming their translation teams.
Combining machine translation with human review helps catch errors and improve overall clarity. Editors enhance tone, fix grammar, and ensure the content is culturally appropriate. The result is a high-quality translation ready for client-facing or published use.
Read more: Machine Translation Evaluation: The Ultimate Guide
MTPE can be tailored to various content types, from product manuals to legal documents and ad campaigns. Human editors adjust tone, terminology, and context to fit specific audience needs. This flexibility makes it valuable for virtually any industry or use case.
With AI handling repetitive tasks, translators can focus on more nuanced and creative edits. This not only enhances their output quality but also allows them to work more efficiently. As a result, they can take on more projects without compromising performance.
Since we've mentioned human translations and raw machine translations, let's explore how these differ from post-machine translation editing. Here’s a simple look at their key differences:
As mentioned, MTPE offers a balanced approach—machines provide the initial translation, and human editors refine it to ensure accuracy, tone, and context. It’s more accurate than raw MT and faster than full human translation.
Raw MT delivers instant results but often lacks context and can miss cultural nuances or introduce errors.
Human translation is the most precise. Professional translators ensure the highest level of accuracy, making it the best choice for content where quality is critical.
Raw MT is the fastest—translations are generated in seconds with no human input.However, despite providing quick and immediate translations, it often sacrifices quality.
MTPE is quicker than full human translation since the machine handles the bulk of the work, and only refinements are made by a human.
Human translation is the slowest, as it involves detailed, manual work—but the result is fully polished and reliable.
Raw MT is the most cost-effective, as there’s no human involvement. It’s best for informal or high-volume internal content. MTPE is a cost-efficient middle ground. The use of machine output reduces the time and cost of human editing.
Meanwhile, human translation is the most expensive due to the expertise and time required, but it's essential for legal, medical, or sensitive materials.
Raw MT often misses idiomatic expressions and cultural subtleties, which can lead to awkward phrasing or misinterpretation. This is why many prefer human translation, as it provides the strongest cultural fit, ensuring your message resonates with the target audience.
However, if you need quick translations without compromising content, MTPE addresses this by correcting tone, expressions, and context during editing.
MTPE allows human editors to adapt terminology, tone, and brand voice—making it suitable for marketing, legal, and technical content. In contrast,Raw MT is fixed and generic, with no ability to adjust for audience or industry.
Human translation is fully customizable and ideal when you need to follow brand guidelines or convey complex ideas accurately.
Here’s an important caveat: many documents still need a fully human touch to do properly, often in industries where high creativity or absolute precision is required.
Translating for the legal sector, for example, or for healthcare—these demand no room for errors, and the full scrutiny of a professional translator with a background in those fields. On the other far end is marketing, where the creative element of human language still eludes machine translation.
Still, with continuing advances in MT technology, MTPE, in the form of full post-editing, is starting to become a feasible option in more and more fields.
Machine translation has a history dating back to the invention of the computer, but MTPE is a fairly recent development. In fact, it’s been less than a decade since post-editing machine translation was considered a serious option for industrial use!
Much research has gone into the development of machine translation, but for over six decades progress remained below the level where it could actually be useful. But thanks to developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning, MT technology was able to develop to a more sophisticated degree than ever before.
The MT engines of today are capable of providing output whose quality is good enough for human translators to review and make edits more quickly than in the past.
Post-editing machine translation isn’t only for translation services companies. Businesses that work with a lot of multilingual data can invest in MTPE too. Small and medium businesses are especially suited for MTPE because it is cost-effective and ensures quality.
MTPE helps these businesses quickly and accurately translate large volumes of content, allowing them to reach global markets. It also ensures consistent branding and messaging in different languages. Perfect for businesses planning to grow internationally.
It isn’t an easy process, however. There is a lot of work to be done in getting the appropriate post-edited machine translation solution for any specific business. But here are some of the basics:
The first step to investing in MTPE is choosing the right MT engine. There are many different ones out there, and it can be overwhelming to decide which one is the right solution, so here are some points to keep in mind.
The first should be to narrow down the options to MT engines adapted for your specific industry. MT engines that are preset with industry-specific data will provide better results than translation engines trained on linguistic data that is generic.
Another consideration with regard to narrowing down your options is how well the MT engine does in specific language pairs. Be sure to choose an MT engine that performs well in the ones that you need.
Finally—and this is the most important thing—the MT engine that you choose should ideally be one that you can customize with your own data. Even if it’s already adapted to your industry, there may be certain terms or phrasing that are unique to you, or which you’d prefer to leave untranslated. Being able to feed new training data to your MT engine will go a long way toward making it a better fit for your specific needs.
Create detailed guidelines for post-editors to follow. These guidelines should include instructions on style, terminology, and quality standards to ensure consistency throughout the translation process.
Clearly defined guidelines help post-editors understand the specific requirements of each project, maintain uniformity in translations, and meet client expectations. By providing comprehensive instructions, you can ensure that all translations align with the desired tone, terminology preferences, and overall quality standards, resulting in more accurate and reliable translations.
Once you’ve chosen your MT engine, the next step is to customize it. But you might think that today’s MT engines are trained upon billions and billions of translated text segments; would your data even make a dent in that kind of training?
The answer is yes. MT engines don’t rely on quantity alone. The quality of data is also important. Today’s MT engines use AI and deep neural networks to make sophisticated connections that depend on high-quality data, which provides the necessary context for the MT engine to make the right translation. Sources of high-quality data include glossaries, translation memories, and text segments that have already been translated properly.
Results may differ among MT engine providers, and some may require more data than others to come up with a well-trained custom MT engine. But with high-quality data, it’s possible to see good results.
Once you’re done with your MT engine, it’s time to turn toward finding the right language professional to work with it.
While post-editing work is mostly proofreading and revising MTPE output in one language, it’s not a good idea to give the work to someone who’s monolingual, or unfamiliar with the source language. Machine translation still isn’t perfect, so there may still be errors that only a human translator is able to catch.
You’ll also want your post-editor to have a background in your particular sector. For example, if you’re in law, what you need is a language professional with a legal background. For the healthcare industry, someone also working in medicine would be appropriate. And so on.
Apart from their knowledge of languages in general, knowledge of your industry’s linguistic terms and their contexts will help your post-editor work more effectively.
Ensure post-editors receive proper training on using the MT system and adhering to your guidelines. Comprehensive training should cover how to effectively utilize the MT software, understand the nuances of post-editing, and apply the established guidelines consistently.
Regular training updates are crucial to keep post-editors informed about new features, best practices, and evolving industry standards. This ongoing education helps maintain high quality in translations and ensures that post-editors are equipped to handle any challenges that arise.
Here’s a pro tip: machine translation works best with simple texts.
It’s always a good idea to look over your source text first to ensure that everything’s grammatically correct and that there are no errors. If you can, take the additional time to change ambiguous phrases, and break down complex sentences into simpler components. Your post-editor will thank you when they receive the better machine-translated output.
Set up a robust quality assurance (QA) process to maintain the highest standards in your translations. Regularly review post-edited translations to identify and rectify any errors or inconsistencies. This review process should include checks for accuracy, cultural relevance, and adherence to style and terminology guidelines.
Additionally, incorporate feedback loops where post-editors can learn from identified issues, leading to continuous improvement. By consistently monitoring and enhancing the quality of translations, you ensure that the final product meets client expectations and industry standards.
Read more: Effective Strategies for Minimizing Machine Translation Errors
Encourage feedback from both post-editors and clients to continually enhance your post-editing translation process. Establish clear channels for receiving and analyzing feedback on various aspects of the translation, such as accuracy, fluency, and cultural appropriateness. Use this valuable information to identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments.
Regularly updating your process based on feedback helps address any recurring issues, implement best practices, and adapt to evolving client needs. By fostering an environment of continuous improvement, you can ensure the overall quality and effectiveness of your MTPE services.
Track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as turnaround time, cost savings, and quality scores to effectively monitor and measure the performance of your post-editing machine translation implementation. Regularly analyze these metrics to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of your processes.
Use the data to identify strengths and areas for improvement, ensuring that your MTPE operations are meeting both client expectations and industry standards. By systematically evaluating these KPIs, you can make informed decisions to optimize workflows, enhance quality, and maximize the overall value of your MTPE services.
Promote collaboration between translators, post-editors, and project managers to enhance the efficiency and quality of your MTPE process. Encourage open and effective communication to ensure that everyone involved understands project requirements, guidelines, and goals.
Regular meetings and collaborative platforms can facilitate knowledge sharing and address any issues promptly. By fostering a collaborative environment, you can ensure smoother workflows, minimize misunderstandings, and achieve better outcomes. This teamwork approach leads to higher-quality translations, greater consistency, and a more cohesive and productive working environment for all parties involved.
Read more: Mastering Translation Efficiency: A Guide to the Top CAT Tools in 2025
Keep up with advancements in machine translation (MT) technology and update your systems regularly to maintain a competitive edge. Stay informed about new features, improvements, and innovations that can enhance the efficiency and accuracy of your post-editing process.
Implementing the latest technology can streamline workflows, reduce errors, and improve the overall quality of translations. Regularly training your team on these new tools and features ensures they are fully equipped to leverage the benefits. By staying technologically current, you can continuously optimize your MTPE operations and deliver superior results.
Machine translation has come a long way to make MTPE a feasible option for businesses. Businesses that want to work with language more efficiently now have many options and the means to get started on their post-editing translation journey.
Planning to implement post-editing machine translation in your business but not sure how to get started? Try our AI-assisted MT engine aggregator. Visit MachineTranslation.com and input your text into our tool. It will evaluate, compare, and analyze the best and most accurate MT engine output for your content.
Our platform also has a post-editing feature that identifies which segments need a human translator. Sign up for a free subscription and get 1,500 free credits per month.
Yes, MTPE is generally more cost-effective because machines do most of the work, reducing the time and effort needed by human editors.
MTPE works well for many types of content but might not be ideal for highly creative or sensitive materials. Human translation is better for those cases.
Absolutely. Human translators are crucial for ensuring high quality, especially for complex or culturally sensitive content. They bring expertise that machines can’t match.
Yes, human editors can tailor MTPE translations to meet specific needs, ensuring the final product aligns with your preferences and requirements.
Yes, MTPE can efficiently handle multiple languages, making it a versatile solution for global businesses with diverse language needs.
No, MTPE is versatile and can be used across various industries, including technical, medical, legal, and marketing fields. Human editors ensure that industry-specific terminology is accurately translated.
Yes, MTPE can be integrated into existing translation workflows, making it a seamless addition to a company's language services.