Article published In: Translation Spaces
Vol. 9:2 (2020) ► pp.255–282
The impact of post-editing and machine translation on creativity and reading experience
Published online: 6 November 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.20035.gue
https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.20035.gue
Abstract
This article presents the results of a study involving the translation of a fictional story from English into Catalan in
three modalities: machine-translated (MT), post-edited (MTPE) and translated without aid (HT). Each translation was analysed to evaluate its
creativity. Subsequently, a cohort of 88 Catalan participants read the story in a randomly assigned modality and completed a survey. The
results show that HT presented a higher creativity score if compared to MTPE and MT. HT also ranked higher in narrative engagement, and
translation reception, while MTPE ranked marginally higher in enjoyment. HT and MTPE show no statistically significant differences in any
category, whereas MT does in all variables tested. We conclude that creativity is highest when professional translators intervene in the
process, especially when working without any aid. We hypothesize that creativity in translation could be the factor that enhances reading
engagement and the reception of translated literary texts.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Related work
- Research methodology
- Source text
- Translation process
- Translators
- Measuring creativity
- Acceptability
- Novelty
- Measuring user experience: Narrative engagement, enjoyment and translation reception
- Demographics and reading patterns
- Comprehension questions
- Narrative engagement
- Enjoyment and translation reception
- Participants
- Results
- Results on creativity
- Acceptability
- Creative shifts
- Creativity score
- Results on user experience
- Narrative engagement
- Enjoyment
- Translation reception
- Correlations
- Results on creativity
- Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
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