How to Improve Website Translation Quality with Professional MT Post-Editing

As the global economy becomes ever more digital, a company website is not just its business card—it’s its international ambassador. As companies rush to make their online presence felt across borders, machine translation (MT) has emerged as a convenient gateway to global visibility. However, the true key to success lies not just in translation but in professional MT post-editing—the human layer that ensures your message reaches every audience with clarity, fluency, and impact. 

At GORR, we understand the rhythm of localization. We’ve seen firsthand how raw MT output, while impressive, often misses the mark in tone, accuracy, or cultural nuance.  

The result?  

A translated website that feels mechanical, flat, or even misleading. That’s where professional post-editing transforms the game. It bridges the gap between speed and quality, marrying the power of neural networks with the intuition of trained linguists. 

When you feed your source content into an MT engine, what comes out is a raw MT output that might look correct on the surface, but behind those lines of machine-generated text lie subtle mistranslations, awkward phrasing, or incorrect terminology—especially if your website content contains branded messaging, domain-specific vocabulary, or emotion-driven marketing language. Machine algorithms operate on patterns; they don’t understand tone, audience intent, or brand voice. That’s why post-editors, the skilled professionals who refine MT content, are essential to high-quality web translation. 

Post-editors do more than just correct typos or swap out mistranslated words. They bring a combination of linguistic finesse and cultural sensitivity to every sentence. Regardless of whether they’re applying a style guide, referencing a termbase, or ensuring consistency across pages, their work ensures that your translated website reads like it was written by a local, not just translated into the language. They look at segments—the building blocks of your translated text—and analyze them through the lens of readability, fluency, and accuracy. 

At GORR, we specialize exclusively in full post-editing, and for good reason. We believe that when it comes to your brand, “good enough” simply isn’t good enough. Machine translation, even at its best, often misses the mark in tone, accuracy, and nuance. That’s why we go beyond basic grammar fixes and surface-level edits. Our full post-editing process ensures that every sentence reads naturally, reflects your brand voice, and meets the high standards of your industry. 

This approach is especially critical for e-commerce and customer-facing content, where clarity, consistency, and style directly impact trust and conversions. Whether it’s a product description, landing page, or technical detail, our native-speaking linguists don’t just clean up the text, they elevate it. We focus on meaning, flow, terminology, and context to transform raw machine output into professional, market-ready copy. 

By choosing full post-editing as our standard, we ensure every piece of content is not only correct, but truly effective because your customers deserve more than just “machine-fixed” text. They deserve content that speaks their language, in every sense. 

Much of this work is supported by CAT tools, which serve as the post-editor’s cockpit. These platforms provide access to translation memory (TM) and bilingual corpora, helping editors stay aligned with previously approved phrases and terminology. But no matter how advanced the toolset, it’s the human behind the screen who makes the judgment calls. A CAT tool can suggest matches, but it can’t determine whether a translation feels “on-brand.” It can highlight inconsistencies, but it can’t recognize humor, irony, or nuance. That’s the domain of the human expert. 

We also emphasize the importance of error categorization and quality assurance (QA) in our workflow. After editing, each translation goes through automated and manual QA checks to ensure nothing slips through the cracks. We’re not just looking at sentence-level edits; we’re examining overall cohesion, tone alignment, and compliance with your brand’s style guide. Whether we’re working with B2B service providers or e-commerce brands, the goal is always the same: to produce target content that is accurate, resonant, and publication-ready. 

One of the lesser-known but critical aspects of professional post-editing is the concept of edit distance—a metric that indicates how much a human editor had to change the MT output. While a low edit distance can imply that the MT output was relatively good, it doesn’t always reflect final quality. What matters more is the readability and naturalness of the result. An edit may be minor but strategically crucial, like changing a single word to align with a product’s branding or tweaking a phrase to match local idioms. In these cases, even a tiny edit can elevate your content from generic to engaging. 

Time efficiency and productivity are also vital concerns for global companies managing multilingual websites. Professional post-editing offers the best of both worlds: the speed of MT with the polish of human translation. When done well, it significantly reduces turnaround time without compromising on quality. At GORR, our post-editors are trained to work swiftly and smartly, supported by TMs and termbases that reduce repetitive work while ensuring consistency across your entire website. 

As more companies expand into new markets, we’re also seeing a rise in the demand for localized SEO. That means making sure your translated content includes relevant keywords in the target language, reflects user search behavior, and aligns with local search trends. Here, too, professional post-editing plays a pivotal role. MT might generate a grammatically correct phrase, but only a post-editor can fine-tune it for cultural relevance and SEO effectiveness. After all, visibility means little if your content isn’t compelling. 

And let’s not forget the emotional impact. A well-translated website doesn’t just convey information—it builds trust. It shows your audience that you care about speaking their language, not just linguistically but culturally. Whether it’s the tone of your FAQ page, the voice in your product descriptions, or the humor in your blog, post-editors ensure that every element feels authentic. They remove the static from the message, allowing your brand personality to shine through in every language. 

At GORR, we believe in empowering our post-editors with the best tools, clear communication, and a deep understanding of each client’s goals. Whether we’re working on a small portfolio page or a vast enterprise-level site, our focus remains the same: delivering translated content that feels crafted, not cobbled together. It’s why we invest in continuous training, develop detailed termbases, and build long-term partnerships with our clients and linguists alike. 

So, if your website is already using machine translation, that’s a great start. But don’t stop there. Make room for the human touch, the kind that knows when a joke falls flat, when a phrase needs rewording, or when your brand tone isn’t quite coming through. With professional MT post-editing, you’re not just translating words. You’re translating meaning, emotion, and intent. 

When your message crosses borders, translation becomes a strategic tool—not just a linguistic one—helping you preserve intent, tone, and brand voice so every audience feels like you’re speaking to them directly, no matter the language.