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What is the difference between light and full post-editing?

Modified on: December 6, 2021 at 3:08 pm

There are two levels of post-editing: light and full.

  • Light post-editing covers the revision of the raw machine translation with only a few modifications required to the machine text to make it understandable for the end user. As far as light post-editing is concerned, no attempt is made to produce a result comparable to a text written by a human translator. This type of post-editing is required when the text is needed urgently, or is used for inbound purposes only.
  • Full post-editing implies a detailed in-depth revision of the machine translation with the purpose of producing an “end result which is of a comparable quality to a human translation” (ISO 18587: 2017), so that the text could be used not only for inbound but also for outbound purposes.
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