Many companies approach machine translation (MT) like an Olympic competition: they think it only makes sense to use it if the machine is trained and customised to their needs, so they assume it will involve a huge amount of preparation and a big financial investment. At the same time, they have high expectations for the application and, most of all, for the result and the savings they'll make on their translations. This attitude often leads to a reluctance to try out MT "untrained" and use it in its generic form for day-to-day business. But, as with sport, it doesn't have to be Olympic gold right from the get go. We'll show you that great things can also be achieved with sports shoes that have run their course.

Teachers at primary schools are female, at universities male. In hospitals, the nursing staff is female, the medics are male. Women are pretty, men are successful. And German government officials are female, even if they are called Olaf. Welcome to the machine.

Machine translation, artificial intelligence and machine learning are the words on everyone's lips. We discussed the topic with our in-house expert in machine translation and post-editing. This produced exciting insights into best practices, challenges and opportunities for customers, freelancers and project managers...