How to Improve Machine Translation Quality

Source: Dev.to

Wondering how to improve machine‑translation quality? That comes as no surprise! Using machine translation in an attempt to achieve highly accurate translations will leave you disappointed if you expect the same output as a human translator.

First off, it’s important to acknowledge that your machine‑translation tool won’t magically improve its linguistics unless you help it. The improvement of machine‑translation output depends on human involvement—editing translations and training your engine. Thankfully, we’re at a point in history where artificial intelligence and machine learning make this easier than ever.

So, if you want to know how to improve machine‑translation quality, there are two ways:

1. Change the way you write your source text
2. Switch to a translation solution that incorporates AI‑driven technology

Below we’ll dive into each method.

Two Methods for Improving Machine Translation Quality

Below, you’ll learn how to improve machine‑translation quality so that you get more accurate, linguistically correct output.

1. Change the Way You Write

One approach you can control is to write your source text in a way that helps the engine. This means structuring files or text chunks so they don’t “confuse” the machine‑translation tool.

We created an infographic that shows how to get high‑quality results by adjusting your writing. You’ll find the full infographic in this post, but here are the key tips extracted from it:

How to Improve Machine Translation Quality by Changing the Way You Write

• Use short sentences
• Make sure your sentence structure is well‑written
• Aim for simple sentence structure
• Use adverbs concisely
• Avoid industry jargon
• Stay away from slang
• Avoid compound words
• Don’t use ambiguous words

Note: If you aren’t the author of the source file (e.g., a client sends you their documents), you may have limited ability to change the writing style. In that case, share the infographic with them and explain how following these guidelines can save time and money on translations.

Now that you know how to improve quality via writing, let’s look at the second method.

2. Train Your Machine Translation Engine to Improve Translation Quality

Another way to boost quality is to train your machine‑translation engine. Choose translation software that incorporates:

• Translation Memory
• Dynamic Machine Learning
• Terminology Management

These components bring machine translation as close as possible to human‑level quality.

Build a Translation Memory

There are two ways to train your engine:

1. Create a Translation Memory (TM) from legacy documents and their translated counterparts. This dramatically improves initial translation quality, though it requires upfront effort to locate and organize the files.

Post‑Edit Machine‑Translated Text

2. Edit documents in real time and let the engine learn your organization’s terminology as you work. Machine learning runs in the background, continuously updating the TM with each edit.

How This Yields High‑Quality Machine Translation

• Translation Memory boosts productivity by auto‑populating future translations with previously translated content.
• Dynamic Machine Learning refines those suggestions as you edit, ensuring consistency and accuracy.

Typical workflow:

1. Upload files to a platform that supports both MT and TM.
2. Receive a draft translation (mostly machine‑generated).
3. Edit the draft segment‑by‑segment within the platform.
4. Each saved edit is stored in your TM and instantly applied to any repeated segments.

Every edit you make makes the engine smarter, leading to higher‑quality output over time.

Dynamic Machine Learning

When you edit a word or phrase that exists within the document, the change is applied not only to that file but also to every other file in the same upload batch. This feature is called Dynamic Machine Learning.

• No need to edit the same word or phrase repeatedly.
• Saves you time and money!

Continuous Machine Translation Improvements

The more Translation Memories you create over time, the better your translation quality becomes and the less input you need to give. Eventually, little involvement will be required from you as the user, because you’ll have adequately trained your machine‑translation engine.

Watch the 3‑minute video below on how to improve machine‑translation quality using Dynamic Machine Learning in combination with Translation Memory.

Important: The person making the edits in the software needs to be bilingual in the source and target languages!

Conclusion

Improving machine‑translation quality requires a combination of better writing practices and continuous system training.

• Clear, simple, and well‑structured source text helps translation engines produce more accurate results.
• Leveraging technologies like translation memory, machine learning, and post‑editing allows the system to learn from past translations and improve over time.

When human expertise and intelligent tools work together, organizations can achieve faster, more consistent, and higher‑quality translations that come closer to human‑level accuracy.

This content was originally published here.