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Article published In:
Translation, Cognition & Behavior
Vol. 6:1 (2023) ► pp.60–86

The impact of traditional and interactive post-editing on Machine Translation User Experience, quality, and productivity

ORCID logo | Dublin City University
ORCID logo | Dublin City University
ORCID logo | University College Dublin

This paper presents a user study with 15 professional translators in the English-Spanish combination. We present the concept of Machine Translation User Experience (MTUX) and compare the effects of traditional post-editing (TPE) and interactive post-editing (IPE) on MTUX, translation quality and productivity. Results suggest that translators prefer IPE to TPE because they are in control of the interaction in this new form of translator-computer interaction and feel more empowered in their interaction with Machine Translation. Productivity results also suggest that IPE may be an interesting alternative to TPE, given the fact that translators worked faster in IPE even though they had no experience in this new machine translation post-editing modality, but were already used to TPE.

Keywords: machine translation, user experience, human-computer interaction, interactive post-editing, translation quality evaluation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Traditional vs interactive post-editing
  • 3.Machine Translation User Experience (MTUX)
  • 4.Methodology
    • Participants
    • Texts
    • IPE workbench
    • Design of the controlled study
    • Measures for MTUX, productivity, and quality
      • Machine Translation User Experience (MTUX)
      • Translation productivity
      • Translation quality
  • 5.Results
    • Analysis approach
    • RQ1. Do the MTPE modalities (TPE or IPE) impact MTUX in a statistically significantly way?
    • RQ2. As translators have more experience in TPE than in IPE, is MTUX impacted by increased experience with the system in a specific MTPE modality?
    • RQ3. Do the MTPE modalities (TPE or IPE) impact translator performance measures (translation quality and productivity) in a statistically significantly way?
      • Translation quality
      • Translation productivity
    • RQ4. Does MTUX correlate with translator performance measures (translation quality and productivity)?
  • 6.Discussion
    • IPE showed significant MTUX benefits to TPE
    • IPE and TPE experience over time—The need for a longitudinal study
    • The relationship between MTUX and performance
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 13 June 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tcb.00077.bri
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