When talking about ‘guidelines’ in a machine translation post-editing commercial context, we usually refer to the instructions that translation or localization project managers send to the post-editors as part of their assignments, mainly with linguistic aspects to be considered. In this chapter, however, we will refer to the guidelines from a managerial point of view; that is, the aspects that a translation or localization project manager needs to consider when setting up a machine translation post-editing workflow.
In this session of the MTPE Training SIG the following aspects were presented by the moderators as a non-exhaustive list of the topics to be considered by a translation or localization project manager when setting up an MTPE workflow: content analysis, formatting, drafting of quotes, purchase orders, evaluation and estimation of resources, training of resources, terminology management, preparation of reference materials and TMs, pre-editing of the source text, tuning of MT engines, post-editing, linguistic check and DTP.
During a brainstorming conducted per groups (academia, post-editors, clients and LSPs), the participants wrote and then voted the guidelines that would definitely need to be part of any MTPE assignment. The following is the list of the most voted guidelines:
In an additional survey conducted during this session of the MTPE Training SIG, the attendees from the 4 groups (academia, post-editors, clients and LSPs) highlighted that the most important challenges to be addressed in an MTPE workflow are inconsistencies in the raw MT output and unforeseen quality corrections.