How Should Post-Editing Be Priced? MTPE Pricing Models Mature

Once machine translation post-editing (MTPE) went mainstream, a practical question confronted buyers and providers alike: how should post-editing be priced? After years of practice and negotiation, industry pricing converged by 2021 into three mainstream models.

Discounted per-source-word: a discount off the full translation rate (commonly 30–50% off) based on MT quality — simple and intuitive, suited to bulk documents with stable MT output. Hourly billing: charging for the linguist's actual editing time — fair to linguists, but requires client trust in the provider's timekeeping. Edit-distance billing: measuring the linguist's actual modifications to the MT output with tools — the most precise approach, and the one most dependent on shared measurement standards.

The maturing of pricing models essentially means the industry now has measurable answers to "how much work does post-editing actually save?" Better MT means smaller edit distance and higher linguist throughput — and how that efficiency dividend is split between client and linguist is the heart of the pricing negotiation.

The lesson for translators is direct: in the MTPE era, editing efficiency and quality judgment — not raw typing speed — determine income.