Testing “Prompt”: The Development of a Rapid Post-Editing Service at CLS Corporate Language Services AG, Switzerland

CLS Corporate Language Services AG recently began offering the rapid post-editing of raw machine translation output to meet the rising demand for this service among clients. What is meant by rapid post-editing is the rough correction of machine translated texts with emphasis on speed and denotative accuracy. In the preliminary phase of the project, CLS conducted a test among four inhouse translators. The objective was to gain practical experience, establish workflow requirements and set up efficient post-editing processes. Text samples were selected from several subject categories, and post-edited in English, German and French. The participants were given 10, 15 and 30 minutes per page to complete their tasks. This paper aims to present the results of the post-editing test at CLS Corporate Language Services AG, and to examine the conditions under which a rapid post-editing service is feasible in a commercial environment.