Poll: How many words can you post-edit per day? Autor vlákna: ProZ.com Staff
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The number of words I can post-edit per day depends on many variables, namely the output “quality”. I never accept a job without having first a good look at the document to be edited. One of the MTPE jobs I’ve done (IT/PT, tourism, circa 45,000 words) took me 8 days, while others took as long as a translation would. I have been refusing most of the MTPE jobs I’m offered. I’m at the end of my career and I only accept the ones I find kind of enjoyable. ... See more The number of words I can post-edit per day depends on many variables, namely the output “quality”. I never accept a job without having first a good look at the document to be edited. One of the MTPE jobs I’ve done (IT/PT, tourism, circa 45,000 words) took me 8 days, while others took as long as a translation would. I have been refusing most of the MTPE jobs I’m offered. I’m at the end of my career and I only accept the ones I find kind of enjoyable. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Alex Lichanow
Německo
Local time: 12:05
angličtina -> němčina
+ ...
| Lingua 5B 
Bosna a Hercegovina
Local time: 12:05
angličtina -> francouzština
+ ...
None. I don’t engage in shady practices and content farming.
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Daryo
Local time: 11:05
srbština -> angličtina
+ ...
A walk in the park is more rewarding than retranslating for scratch with the supposed 'big help' from some machine-generated attempted translation.
Wouldn't touch that kind of 'translation work' with a bargepole wearing two pairs of glove.
Let's leave our old friend the friendly local plumber alone, for a change.
Try going to your local garage and ask the mechanic to fix your car for the third of the normal tariff after you made a mess of it by your amat... See more A walk in the park is more rewarding than retranslating for scratch with the supposed 'big help' from some machine-generated attempted translation.
Wouldn't touch that kind of 'translation work' with a bargepole wearing two pairs of glove.
Let's leave our old friend the friendly local plumber alone, for a change.
Try going to your local garage and ask the mechanic to fix your car for the third of the normal tariff after you made a mess of it by your amateurish tinkering because the bulk of work is already done ... and see how far you'll get! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Gregor Trebec
Slovinsko
Local time: 12:05
angličtina -> slovinština
+ ...
| Zea_Mays
Itálie
Local time: 12:05
angličtina -> němčina
+ ...
In order to be eligible for MTPE, a project must comply with a few aspects.
- The content is repetitive and/or not creative.
- A neural MT engine must be used. Very few people understand why this matters, though. It is a program that will only be trained on that specific content, meaning its output should be of acceptable quality, speed up the editing process and improve over time.
With these requirements met, you can edit over 8,000 words per day, though I'd suggest not going ... See more In order to be eligible for MTPE, a project must comply with a few aspects.
- The content is repetitive and/or not creative.
- A neural MT engine must be used. Very few people understand why this matters, though. It is a program that will only be trained on that specific content, meaning its output should be of acceptable quality, speed up the editing process and improve over time.
With these requirements met, you can edit over 8,000 words per day, though I'd suggest not going beyond 6,000/7,000 when working on larger projects in order to not owerwork oneself.
[Bearbeitet am 2026-01-13 11:05 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgie
Local time: 12:05
Člen (2020)
francouzština -> nizozemština
+ ...
Zea_Mays wrote:
With these requirements met, you can edit over 8,000 words per day, though I'd suggest not going beyond 6,000/7,000 when working on larger projects in order to not owerwork oneself.
This matches about 100% my own experience.
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Samuel Murray
Nizozemsko
Local time: 12:05
Člen (2006)
angličtina -> afrikánština
+ ...
| In my field: 1500 per hour; outside my field: 400 per hour | Jan 13 |
Zea_Mays wrote:
With these requirements met, you can edit over 8,000 words per day, though I'd suggest not going beyond 6,000/7,000 when working on larger projects in order to not overwork oneself.
Yes. It also depends on the type of text, the subject field, one's knowledge of the subject field, how well the source text is suited for translation, etc. It also depends on the quality of the machine translation, and whether the translator is allowed to use an alternative source of machine translations from what the client had provided. And of course whether the translator is able to use his chosen CAT tool.
For example, in my specialist field, the source documents are often written with translation in mind, and after doing this for 20 years I'm very familiar with the types of text that I might encounter, so it's not unusual to achieve 1500-2500 words per hour. And my translations are very good -- they read like a human translation. But when I post-edit text from outside of my field, or text that was not written with translation in mind, I sometimes achieve only 400-700 words per hour. And my translations are not nearly as good as those of some of my colleagues who are experts in those fields.
I'm actually a rather mediocre translator (-: and PEMT sometimes helps me achieve better translations. I call myself an "efficient" translator.
[Edited at 2026-01-13 11:53 GMT]
| | | | Liena V.
Lotyšsko
Local time: 13:05
Člen (2014)
francouzština -> lotyština
+ ...
It depends on each project and even with somewhat decent output quality it can actually make me less productive because of how dull it is – as it happens, I should be working on one right now instead of writing this extremely important comment here because that's simply more interesting...
Luckily, I only do MTPE for EU institutions and even those offers have become very rare. I can only guess to what extent they've dropped the PE part entirely leaving only MT and if their staff t... See more It depends on each project and even with somewhat decent output quality it can actually make me less productive because of how dull it is – as it happens, I should be working on one right now instead of writing this extremely important comment here because that's simply more interesting...
Luckily, I only do MTPE for EU institutions and even those offers have become very rare. I can only guess to what extent they've dropped the PE part entirely leaving only MT and if their staff translators are handling most of the remaining work in-house now. I am not getting much of MTPE offers from anybody else either and don't have the impression that there are fountains of it around if I just stopped being so stubborn and finally accepted it's the future. I've become convinced that the only reason for using MTPE – besides cutting costs – is just having someone to blame and I have no interest to be the scapegoat for robots. I only take full responsibility for my own work, as I will explain in no uncertain terms to anyone who wants me to do MTPE at half of my rate or less. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Daryo
Local time: 11:05
srbština -> angličtina
+ ...
Zea_Mays wrote:
In order to be eligible for MTPE, a project must comply with a few aspects.
- The content is repetitive and/or not creative.
- A neural MT engine must be used. Very few people understand why this matters, though. It is a program that will only be trained on that specific content, meaning its output should be of acceptable quality, speed up the editing process and improve over time.
With these requirements met, you can edit over 8,000 words per day, though I'd suggest not going beyond 6,000/7,000 when working on larger projects in order to not owerwork oneself.
[Bearbeitet am 2026-01-13 11:05 GMT]
Yes, doing MTPE that way is a special case - it gets close to checking the work of someone who at least is familiar with the subject matter. That is not that bad.
But that's hardly comparable to being expected to turn into something palatable the output of whichever free general purpose machine translation engine happened to be available, which is the most usual 'MTPE offer'.
Even that way, I still wouldn't be interested, but that's only me. Same as I would send any offer to work on 'segments' straight into the rubbish bin.
As for the only reason for using MTPE – besides cutting costs – is just having someone to blame and be used as scapegoat for some robot's mess', I never considered it under that angle, but it does sound very plausible.
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgie
Local time: 12:05
Člen (2020)
francouzština -> nizozemština
+ ...
Daryo wrote:
Yes, doing MTPE that way is a special case.
It's not a special case. Most of my agency clients work that way, and if they don't then I make sure I myself work that way through some kind of workaround.
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jyuan_us
Spojené státy americké
Local time: 06:05
Člen (2005)
angličtina -> čínština
+ ...
Will your clients print/publish/distribute your deliverables directly? Will they have their own proofreaders review your copy? The time required for each case could vary a lot.
[Edited at 2026-01-14 23:20 GMT]
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