If you’ve decided to use an automatic translation tool to translate your e-commerce content, you need to be aware of its limitations. While these technologies have indeed come a long way in recent years, they are still not error-free. Far from it. Localisation, for instance, remains one of their key weaknesses. This is because translation is not just about swapping words from one language to another, but about conveying the message in a way that suits each market. This is where post-editing comes into play: the expert eye of a professional proofreader.
What is post-editing and how can it improve your e-commerce texts?
Put simply, post-editing is the process of correcting a text that has been translated by AI or an automatic translation tool, carried out by a human professional. Contrary to popular belief, the purpose of post-editing is not merely to correct grammatical errors, as such mistakes are rarely made by these tools anymore. The goals are different. Let’s take a closer look!
Improving the text’s flow
In many cases, automatic translations result in unnatural sentence structures that do not reflect how a native speaker would express themselves. This is because these tools often translate word-for-word or follow syntactic patterns that do not always align with the way the target language works. The result is a text that, while understandable, sounds unnatural. Post-editing involves the reviewer reformulating these structures to make them sound more natural and enhance readability.
Ensuring coherence
Another key aim of post-editing is to ensure that important elements of the content, such as the tone of voice or the use of specific terminology, remain consistent throughout the text. For example, the AI in your e-commerce platform may translate the word ‘home’ as ‘home page’ in some instances and incorrectly as ‘house’ or ‘main page’ in others. A reviewer will adjust the translation to ensure uniformity and avoid inconsistencies or confusion in your online shop.
Localising the content
As mentioned in the introduction, localisation is the Achilles’ heel of automatic translation. These technologies are programmed to provide ‘standard’ translations without considering the target market, audience or cultural references relevant to each region. Post-editing enables a human reviewer to localise these automatic translations, ensuring that your e-commerce marketing content makes sense, builds trust, and resonates with your audience.
Untranslating
Yes, we made the word up. By this, we mean reverting certain terms or expressions back to their original language when they should never have been translated in the first place. This is something that AI often fails to detect. This frequently happens with product names, brands, specific features or loan words from other languages that are already familiar to the target audience.
For example, AI might mistakenly translate the well-known mobile phone brand Orange as ‘Naranja’ in Spanish. This would be a serious error, wouldn’t you agree? In such cases, the reviewer’s job is, ironically, to go back to square one and leave it exactly as it was.
What can a professional reviewer offer that AI can’t?
No matter how much automatic translation tools improve, there are three qualities they will never possess: judgement, intuition and cultural insight. Only a human can develop these three qualities, which means automatic translation will always need to coexist with professional human review.
However, for a revision to be effective and of a high quality, the reviewer must be a native speaker of the target language. This ensures they have a full command of the language and can pick up on subtleties, idiomatic expressions and cultural nuances that a non-native speaker might miss.
What specific objectives can a reviewer achieve in your e-commerce?
- Revise and correct product descriptions to avoid misunderstandings about purchases
- Localise automatically translated marketing materials
- Optimise your website for search engines (multilingual SEO)
- Detect important errors in legal texts, such as the privacy policy
- Fine-tune interface microcopy (e.g. CTA buttons and pop-ups) to avoid harming conversion
- Eliminate formatting errors
The list goes on and on.
Professional review: what your e-commerce business needs to break into new markets
Automatic translation may seem like the cheapest option at first. However, if it’s not accompanied by professional post-editing carried out by native reviewers who can address or eliminate any errors the machine may have made, it can become very costly. This review process is even more crucial in e-commerce, as the quality of your content heavily influences purchasing decisions.
If you weren’t aware of the importance of post-editing and have skipped this step in your e-commerce process, don’t hesitate to fill in our contact form so that we can send you a quote with the most competitive rates as soon as possible. Don’t put it off any longer!
