Introduction: Compiled by Jeff Allen, this web site "primarily" focuses on referencing articles, books, theses, dissertations and other documents that are on the topic of Machine Translation (MT) postediting (also known as post-editing). Please note that this is not about image postediting / post-editing. This site also provides links to related topics (Machine Translation and translation software, controlled language input, writing for translation, speech recognition and speech synthesis systems, language resource databases, etc.

This site was established in late January 2004.

The use of the icon on this web site indicates reference which has recently "been added" to this information portal site, whether the reference be old or recent.

The use of the icon on this web site is to indicate updated information (usually to update broken URL links) about a given entry.

What is MT Postediting?

"Postediting/post-editing (PE) is by far most commonly associated as a task related to Machine Translation (MT) and has been previously defined as the "term used for the correction of machine translation output by human linguists/editors." Another good summary statement indicates that "post-editing entails correction of a pre-translated text rather than translation ‘from scratch’." In basic terms, the task of the post-editor is to edit, modify and/or correct pre-translated text that has been processed by a machine translation system from a source language into (a) target language(s)." Quote taken from ALLEN, Jeffrey. 2003. Post-editing. In Computers and Translation: A Translators Guide. Edited by Harold Somers. Benjamins Translation Library, 35. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (ISBN 90 272 1640 1).

MT Postediting is not ...

Please note that this is not about image postediting / post-editing. At present, there is not dedicated postediting / post-editing software, so this is not covered.

Forum discussions

Professional Translator forum discussions related to MT Postediting

ProZ: click here and search on the keyword: postediting

Translatorscafe: click here and search on the keyword: postediting (make sure to set the date limit to "do not limit by date")

Systran thread in MT forum at Translatorscafe: click here

Systran Users Yahoo group: click here

PROMT thread in MT forum at Translatorscafe: click here

PROMT Users Yahoo group: click here

Reverso thread in MT forum at Translatorscafe: click here

Reverso Users Yahoo group: click here


Publications and presentations

Machine Translation (MT) Postediting publications and presentations by Jeff Allen

ALLEN, Jeffrey. June 2006. Improved Translation Quality with Machine Translation Dictionary Building. Published by Translatorscafe. click here to access the article in PDF format (in separate browser window).

ALLEN, Jeffrey. January/February 2005. Getting started with Machine Translation. In the special supplement "Guide to Translation" of MultiLingual Computing & Technology, Number 69, Volume 16, Issue 1. click here to access the Guide to Translation in PDF format (in separate browser window).

ALLEN, Jeffrey. 2005. What is Post-editing? Translation Automation Newsletter, Issue 4. February 2005. click here to access the article in PDF format (in separate browser window).

ALLEN, Jeffrey. 2004. Case Study: Implementing MT for the Translation of Pre-sales Marketing and Post-sales Software Deployment Documentation. pp 1-6. In Robert E. Frederking, Kathryn Taylor (Eds.): Machine Translation: From Real Users to Research, 6th Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas, AMTA 2004, Washington, DC, USA, September 28-October 2, 2004, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3265 Springer 2004, ISBN 3-540-23300-8 click here.

ALLEN, Jeffrey. 2004. Mastering Machine Translation output: MT dictionary building and postediting. Tutorial presented at the 6th Biennal Conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA-2004), Washington DC, USA, 28 Sept - 2 Oct 2004. click here.

ALLEN, Jeffrey. 2003. Post-editing. In Computers and Translation: A Translators Guide. Edited by Harold Somers. Benjamins Translation Library, 35. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (ISBN 90 272 1640 1). click here for information on the book and chapter.

ALLEN, Jeffrey. 2002. Review of "Repairing Texts: Empirical Investigations of Machine Translation Post-Editing Processes". (KRINGS Hans, edited by Geoffrey KOBY. 2001. Translated from German to English by Geoffrey Koby, Gregory Shreve, Katjz Mischerikow and Sarah Litzer) Translation Studies series. Ohio: Kent State University Press. In Multilingual Computing and Technology magazine. Number 46. March 2002. Pp. 27-29. click here to access the article (in separate browser window).

ALLEN, Jeffrey. 2001. Postediting: an integrated part of a translation software program. In Language International magazine, April 2001, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 26-29. click here to access the article in PDF format (in separate browser window).

ALLEN, Jeffrey. 2001. Post-editing or no post-editing? In International Journal for Language and Documentation, Issue 8, December 2000/January 2001. pp. 41-42. click here to download the article in MS Word format.

ALLEN, Jeffrey and Christopher HOGAN. 2000. Toward the development of a post-editing module for Machine Translation raw output: a new productivity tool for processing controlled language. Presented at the Third International Controlled Language Applications Workshop (CLAW2000), held in Seattle, Washington, 29-30 April 2000. click here to download the article in MS Word format


Machine Translation (MT) Postediting publications and presentations by other authors

Guzmán, R. 2008. Advanced automatic MT post-editing. Multilingual, #95, vol. 19, issue 3, pp. 52-57. click here to access the article (in separate browser window) in PDF format.

Guzmán, R. 2007. Manual MT Post-editing: if it's not broken, don't fix it! Translation Journal, vol. 11, No. 4. click here to access the article (in separate browser window) in PDF format.

Guzmán, R. 2007. Automating MT post-editing using regular expressions. Multilingual, #90, vol. 18, issue 6, pp. 49-52. click here to access the article (in separate browser window) in PDF format.

Martin Roberts (President of Linguistic Systems, Inc.) May 31, 2007. Optimizing Post-Editing. Published by Language Weaver, VOLUME 3 ISSUE 5. click here to access the article (in separate browser window).

GUERRA, Lorena. 2003. Human Translation versus Machine Translation and Full Post-Editing of Raw Machine Translation Output. Master's Thesis. Dublin City University. click here to access the thesis (in separate browser window) in PDF format.

MAIER, Elisabeth and Anthony CLARKE. MT Summit 2003. Scalability in MT Systems click here to access the article (in separate browser window) in PDF format.

HYLAND, Catherine. MT Summit 2003. Testing Prompt: The Development of a Rapid Post-Editing Service at CLS Corporate Language Services AG. click here to access the article (in separate browser window) in PDF format at MT Summit pages or click here to access the article (in separate browser window) in PDF format at the LISA site.

PETRITS, Angeliki. 2001. EC Systran: The Commission’s Machine Translation System. click here to access the article (in separate browser window) in PDF format.

KNIGHT, Kevin and Ishwar CHANDER. 1994. Automated Postediting of Documents. In Proceedings of National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). click here to access the article (in separate browser window) in Postscript format.


Machine Translation (MT) publications, conference presentations and discussion list threads (co-)authored by Jeff Allen

ALLEN, Jeffrey. March 2004. Translation Speed versus Content Management. In special supplement of Multilingual Computing and Technology magazine, Number 62, March 2004.click here to access the article (in separate browser window). (this is an analysis of metrics for translators and translation agencies to determine translation speed for their translation bids, and to provide a benchmark for measuring MT postediting productivity)

ALLEN, Jeffrey. March 2004. Thinking about machine translation: several questions to ask yourself when you read an article about MT technologies. In special supplement of Multilingual Computing and Technology magazine, Number 62, March 2004.click here to access the article (in separate browser window).

ALLEN, Jeffrey. 2000. What about statistical-based Machine Translation? In International Journal for Language and Documentation (IJLD), Issue 7, October/November 2000. pp. 41-42. click here to access the article (in separate browser window) in HTML format or click here to download the article in MS Word format.

ALLEN, Jeffrey. 2000. The Value of Internet Translation Portals. In International Journal for Language and Documentation (IJLD), Issue 6, August/September 2000, pp. 45-46. click here to download the article in MS Word format.

ALLEN, Jeffrey and Christopher HOGAN. 1998. Expanding lexical coverage of parallel corpora for the Example-Based Machine Translation approach. In Proceedings of the First International Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC98), 28-30 May 1998, Granada, Spain. Vol. 2, pp. 747-754. click here to download the article.

ALLEN, Jeffrey and Khalid CHOUKRI. 2000. Survey on multilingual issues, and the evolution of languages in speech and machine translation products. Report written within the framework of the LE4-8335 Language Resources Production and Packaging (LRsPP) project. European Language Resources Distribution Agency & the European Commission. Abstract: The ELRA survey on evolution of languages in speech and machine translation products was conducted between March and June 2000 with the objective of analyzing technology providers' offer with respect to languages in these domains. The survey was conceived as a more specific follow-up to the more general study on user needs with regard to language resources for which the results have already been presented in Vol. 4, No. 4 of the ELRA newsletter. click here to download the article. You must be an ELRA member to access the document.


Types of MT systems

ALLEN, Jeff. 2004. Inbound versus Outbound Translation. Presented in the Panel entitled "Localization in customer support" at the Localization World conference, Bonn, Germany, June 29 - July 1, 2004. click here.


Controlled Language and Machine Translation publications and presentations by Jeff Allen

Go to my Controlled Language web site which lists all of my publications and presentations (and discussion list posts) on Controlled Language and Controlled Translation: click here to access http://www.oocities.org/controlledlanguage/


Machine Translation (MT) and other language technology software reviews

click here to access the Language Technology Software Review site

click here for the list of reviews by Jeff Allen


About Jeff Allen

Jeff Allen has 15 years of experience in the language industry, with the majority in commercial and industrial areas of controlled language, translation software, and localization. His biosketch is here (in separate browser window) at the Multilingual Computing and Technology magazine web site. A more detailed description of his experience is provided here (in separate browser window) on Linkedin.

He can be reached at p o s t e d i t i n g STOPSPAM @ g m a i l . c o m. Make sure to take the STOPSPAM out of the email address.


Jeffrey Allen
Copyright © 2008 Jeffrey Allen. All rights reserved.
Last revision date: 30 October 2008
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