Machine Translation Post-Editing
ISO 18587 covers requirements for the process of full post-editing of machine translation output - the human review of AI-generated translations.
- Machine Translation
- Post-Editing Process
- Human Review
- Quality Levels
- Competence Requirements
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About ISO 18587:2017 - Machine Translation Post-Editing
ISO 18587:2017 specifies requirements for the process of full post-editing of machine translation (MT) output. Post-editing is the process by which a human editor reviews and corrects the output of a machine translation system to produce a final translation that meets defined quality requirements. ISO 18587 is the first international standard to address this increasingly important process in the language services industry.
The standard distinguishes between two levels of post-editing: light post-editing, which aims to produce a comprehensible translation without ensuring full equivalence to a human translation, and full post-editing, which aims to produce a translation of equivalent quality to a human translation. ISO 18587 covers full post-editing only.
ISO 18587 specifies competence requirements for post-editors - the human editors who review and correct MT output. Post-editors must possess the same linguistic competence as translators (professional-level proficiency in both source and target languages), subject-matter competence relevant to the content being post-edited, and additional competence specific to post-editing including the ability to identify and correct MT errors efficiently, knowledge of MT system capabilities and limitations, and the ability to work productively with MT output without over-editing.
The standard specifies process requirements for full post-editing covering pre-production activities (agreement on post-editing specifications, MT system selection, and style guide preparation), the post-editing process itself (correction of MT errors while preserving MT output where it is correct), and post-production activities (quality checking and delivery).
ISO 18587 is used by translation service providers, MT system developers, and organizations using MT in their translation workflows to establish quality standards for post-editing services. It is used alongside ISO 17100 (translation services), ISO 5060 (machine translation quality evaluation), and ISO 11669 (translation project framework).
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