Translation Blog

Translation tips, AI insights & freelance guides

How to Measure Machine Translation Quality for Agency Work
B2B 2026-07-12 17 min

How to Measure Machine Translation Quality for Agency Work

A practical guide to measuring machine translation quality for agencies - BLEU, COMET, MQM, TER explained with pilot testing methodology and quality thresholds.

machine translation MT quality translation agency
How to Run an MT Engine Bake-Off: A Step-by-Step Comparison Guide
B2B 2026-07-12 16 min

How to Run an MT Engine Bake-Off: A Step-by-Step Comparison Guide

Practical methodology for comparing MT engines: test corpus design, automatic metrics (BLEU, COMET, TER), blind human evaluation, TCO calculation, and how to make a defensible engine selection decision.

machine translation MT evaluation MT engine comparison
How to Run a Human Evaluation of MT Output the Right Way
B2B 2026-07-11 15 min

How to Run a Human Evaluation of MT Output the Right Way

A practical guide for translation agency PMs and quality engineers: rater selection, MQM vs Direct Assessment, sample size, inter-annotator agreement, and the mistakes that make your eval meaningless.

MT evaluation machine translation quality MQM
Light vs Full Post-Editing: How to Decide for Every Project
B2B 2026-07-11 16 min

Light vs Full Post-Editing: How to Decide for Every Project

Practical framework for choosing between LAPE and FAPE per ISO 18587 - with real rates, words-per-hour benchmarks, a project-type decision matrix, and how to handle misclassified briefs.

post-editing MTPE translation workflow
How Much to Discount MTPE from Human Translation Rates
B2B 2026-07-11 12 min

How Much to Discount MTPE from Human Translation Rates

No standard discount exists for MTPE - industry practice ranges from 10% to 80% off human rates. Here's the math, the models, and how to negotiate a rate you can actually live with.

MTPE post-editing translation rates
MTPE Pricing Models: Per-Word vs Hourly vs Effort-Based Compared
B2B 2026-07-11 15 min

MTPE Pricing Models: Per-Word vs Hourly vs Effort-Based Compared

Head-to-head comparison of three MTPE pricing models - per-word, hourly, and effort-based - with real 2026 rates, pros and cons for both agencies and translators, and a decision framework.

MTPE translation pricing post-editing rates