The ISO 18587 certification for the post-editing of machine translation testifies to the quality of our processes and output. This is our third certification, following ISO 17100 for translation services and ISO 9001 for quality management, and means our customers can rest assured that they’ll receive verifiably high quality when it comes to neural machine translation as well. Not to mention seamless, transparent processes at all three of our locations.
Human or machine? Both!
Although the name might suggest otherwise, the human touch plays a crucial role in machine translation. The computer-generated text is either lightly or fully post-edited by highly trained and experienced linguists. In addition to possessing the standard qualifications for translators, all our post-editors also fulfill the following ISO-mandated requirements:
- Experience with computer-aided translation tools
- Knowledge of NMT technology and familiarity with typical machine translation errors
- Ability to judge how much time and effort a post-editing task is likely to take on the basis of the MT output
- Ability to make corrections, provide feedback and contribute to the improvement of the MT output in the long term
- Understanding of how NMT systems work together with translation memories and termbases
The process determines the quality
When it comes to process management, ISO 18587 requires that language service providers pay attention to correspondences between the source and target texts and guarantee the intelligibility of the machine output. The certification also stipulates:
- A fixed pre-production process
- Documentation of all requirements for post-editing projects, accessible to the post-editor
- Access to the source and machine-translated texts in an appropriate format, as well as to all necessary reference materials, for the post-editor
- Precise labeling of machine-translated and other outputs (e.g. in a translation memory)
We speak more than 100 languages. But when it comes to quality, we’re all on the same page.
Full post-editing should produce a text equivalent to a human translation. Our output meets the rigorous ISO quality requirements, which state that a text must not only be intelligible, but also consistent in its style, terminology and vocabulary. It must also meet all of the target language’s spelling, grammar and punctuation rules, comply with any relevant style guides and have a style appropriate to the text type.
So no matter which language or content our global clients request for machine translation, it’s guaranteed that everyone – customer, post-editor and Supertext – is on the same page.
Cover image via iStock