Machine translations, while efficient, are far from perfect. In this project, it was crucial that the post-editing be performed by a
Senior Translator with 8 years of experience in English to French translation, specifically
Québécois French. Furthermore, the translator was born and bred in Montreal and holds a Master’s degree from UQAM, which made him an excellent candidate!
The post-editing process focused on two main areas: punctuation and vocabulary localization. Key adjustments included:
- Punctuation correction. French (France) machine translations often insert non-breaking spaces before punctuation marks like exclamation points (!), question marks (?), and semicolons (;). In Québécois French, however, these spaces are unnecessary, so they were carefully removed.
- Apostrophe adjustments. Machine translations typically use straight apostrophes ('), which were changed to the correct curly apostrophes (') used in both French (France) and Québécois French.
- Vocabulary localization. Several English terms commonly accepted in French (France) needed replacement to align with Québécois standards. For example, the English word "spray" was replaced with "pulvérisateur," "manager" with "gestionnaire," "coaching" with "encadrement," and "e-mail" with "courriel." These changes ensured the accurate representation of the local language.