FIT CAT Tools & Translation Technology 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is 'post-editing of machine translation' (PEMT) in professional translation workflows?
- Editing a human translation after the client reviews it
- A human translator reviewing and correcting MT output to meet quality standards (Correct answer)
- Using MT to check a human translator's work for errors
- The process of training an MT engine on post-edited content
Correct answer: A human translator reviewing and correcting MT output to meet quality standards
PEMT involves a professional translator editing raw machine translation output to reach light or full publication quality.
Question 2: Which term describes MT output that has been corrected only for critical errors (factual mistakes, offensive content) but not for stylistic improvements?
- Full post-editing
- Light post-editing (Correct answer)
- Transcreation
- Gisting
Correct answer: Light post-editing
Light post-editing targets only egregious errors and ensures basic comprehension, without polishing style or flow.
Question 3: In terminology management, what is a TBX file used for?
- Storing translator invoices and billing records
- Exchanging structured termbase data between different CAT and terminology tools (Correct answer)
- Defining segmentation rules for Asian languages
- Backing up translation memory in a compressed format
Correct answer: Exchanging structured termbase data between different CAT and terminology tools
TBX (TermBase eXchange) is an XML-based open standard for sharing multilingual terminology databases across different platforms.
Question 4: A localization engineer mentions 'pseudo-translation.' What is its purpose?
- Translating a document using a pseudonym for confidentiality
- Replacing source text with modified characters to test software UI for text expansion and encoding issues (Correct answer)
- A quick machine translation pass used only for internal review
- Translating placeholder text before the final source content is ready
Correct answer: Replacing source text with modified characters to test software UI for text expansion and encoding issues
Pseudo-translation replaces source strings with elongated or accented versions to identify layout, truncation, and encoding problems before real localization begins.
Question 5: What does 'concordance search' allow a translator to do within a CAT tool?
- Check whether source and target word counts match exactly
- Search translation memories for any segment containing a specific word or phrase (Correct answer)
- Compare two target files side by side for consistency
- Run a spell-check against a project-specific dictionary
Correct answer: Search translation memories for any segment containing a specific word or phrase
A concordance search queries the TM for all segments that contain a specified term, helping translators find previously used translations in context.
Question 6: Which technology underpins modern neural machine translation (NMT) engines like DeepL and Google Translate?
- Rule-based linguistic parsing trees
- Statistical n-gram language models
- Transformer-based deep learning architectures (Correct answer)
- Example-based translation retrieval systems
Correct answer: Transformer-based deep learning architectures
Contemporary NMT systems use transformer neural network architectures, which model long-range dependencies in text and produce more fluent translations.
Question 7: When a CAT tool reports '0% match' for a segment, what is the standard professional expectation?
- The segment should be skipped and flagged for the client to handle
- The translator translates the segment from scratch without TM assistance (Correct answer)
- The tool automatically sends the segment to MT and locks it
- The segment is removed from the final deliverable
Correct answer: The translator translates the segment from scratch without TM assistance
A 0% (or no) match means the TM has no similar source segment, so the translator must produce a fresh translation unaided by the memory.
FIT CAT Tools & Translation Technology 3
What is 'post-editing of machine translation' (PEMT) in professional translation workflows?