For many L&D professionals, localising training content feels like a constant juggling act. You’re under pressure to deliver faster, more cost-effectively, and in more languages, while still keeping everything high quality, on-brand and under budget.
Built-in tools and translation plug-ins can help you get started quickly. But what happens when stakeholders push back on fluency? When local reviewers flag cultural mismatches? Or when the brand team insists your training “doesn’t sound like us” anymore?
As global teams grow and learner diversity increases, these challenges intensify. We know that learning preferences are highly culturally sensitive, and our use of AI is becoming more sophisticated. English-only content no longer cuts it, and generic machine translation often falls short.
You need a localisation approach that can keep pace with demand while still delivering nuance, relevance, and learner engagement.
That’s where customised Machine Translation with Automated Post-editing (“MTAP” for short) can help.
So, what is MTAP?
MTAP stands for Machine Translation and Automated Post-editing (meaning a fully AI solution), and it’s a fast and scalable way to produce learner-ready translations that reflect your brand and training goals.
At its core, MTAP is designed to provide you with more control than standard machine translation, without slowing you down.
It combines two key processes:
Step 1: Customised machine translation (MT)
Instead of using a generic MT engine, we fine-tune the system to work specifically for your organisation.
This setup is highly specialised, and we work hard behind the scenes to partner our world-class linguists with our tech expertise. It’s essential we get it right at the start, as the rules and training we implement at this stage will significantly impact the overall translation quality.
We’ll work with you to gather relevant input material and customise your engine with:
- Examples of your previous training content
- Your preferred terminology
- Your brand tone and style guidelines, formatting and punctuation preferences
- Any other important reference considerations
This means your machine translations start closer to your ideal output, significantly reducing the load on the review and revision stage.
Step 2: AI-powered automated post-editing (AP)
Once the translation is complete, we apply AI-based editing rules to improve structure, clarity, and fluency. This is also the stage where we tailor the content to any market-specific requirements you might have set, e.g. using the formal “usted” to address your customers in Spanish, but the informal “tú” for your colleagues. Again, this is a crucial step for ensuring the content is adapted to your audience’s expectations, both linguistically and culturally.
These post-editing steps help the content read more smoothly and naturally, making it more accessible to global learners and enhancing the overall impact of the final output.
Localising your eLearning boosts productivity, inclusivity and the overall proficiency of your workforce.
Why are learning teams using MTAP?
As your training needs expand, MTAP offers a localisation process that can grow with you, while keeping your content consistent, on-brand, and engaging in every market.
Here’s what sets it apart from other methods of localisation:
- Customised: Every translation reflects your tone, values and style.
- Consistent: Rules and terminology are applied uniformly across all modules, ensuring all content sounds cohesive and aligned with your preferences.
- Fast: Given that it’s a completely automated process (after the initial set-up phase), it’s much quicker than other service levels.
- Flexible: If you have content or modules that require particular attention, you can always submit them for human review, where our expert, native-speaking linguists can review and polish the output, giving you total reassurance.
- Scalable: MTAP works just as well for five languages as for 25, with little additional time added to your project schedule.
Bonus content:
Did you see our guide on common eLearning translation mistakes to avoid? It’s worth checking out if you’re writing content for non-English learners, and it gives practical tips on what (and what not!) to do.
How do you get started with MTAP?
The great thing about working with a specialised, well-established provider like Comtec is that we have extensive experience in a wide range of L&D projects. We’ve worked with dozens of eLearning clients and delivered thousands of projects, so we know what works best and can help you get up and running with minimal fuss.
Essentially, though, there are three ways you can use MTAP:
Project-by-project
Perhaps you have a high-volume course that requires translation into multiple languages. This would be a great use case for investing time in getting MTAP set up, allowing you to process the content with maximum efficiency.
And if particular modules or markets need more care, you can always use the hybrid model to professionally (human) edit certain parts of the content.
Self-serve access via our Pronto platform
Pronto is our self-service version of MTAP, giving you 24/7 access to customised, AI-edited translations. It’s a great and economical option for teams with high-volume needs, as it provides your entire organisation with access (user seats are unlimited) to the tool.
No more complicated and fragmented sign-off loops, no more costly market-by-market resource expenses. Just one tool that everyone can use to produce brand-customised, market-adapted content efficiently. It makes life much easier for teams handling large-scale projects.
Investing in Pronto can also yield a business-wide benefit, as you can set prompts within the tool for various use cases, such as L&D audiences versus social media, sales, or customer service. One tool can be used cross-functionally by any and all teams that need multilingual content.
Finally, budget-wise, it’s very economical compared to similar tools on the market, with prices starting from just £550 per month. Best of all, if you sign up for a three-month plan, we have a special offer available at the moment; you’ll get your first month free.
If you’d like to learn more about Pronto, you can download a brochure or book a quick demo, where we can walk you through how it works and how it could help your organisation.
Ready to learn more?
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of what MTAP is, how it works, and how it could help your team scale up without losing sight of what makes your learning content work.
If you’re building out your localisation strategy, hunting for a new tool or just looking for a way to reduce your overheads and time to market, we’d love to help you explore your options.
We have over 40 years of experience in the localisation industry and are one of UK’s leaders in eLearning translations, working with prominent clients such as Sponge, MindTools, and Omniplex, and delivering L&D content for brands like Google, PepsiCo, and IKEA. We have plenty of experience to know what does and doesn’t work, and can help you hit the ground running with minimum fuss.
Get in touch, and we’ll schedule a quick, no-obligation call to discuss the challenges you’re facing and explore potential solutions.