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Article published In:
Fair MT: Towards ethical, sustainable Machine Translation
Edited by Joss Moorkens, Dorothy Kenny and Félix do Carmo
[Translation Spaces 9:1] 2020
► pp. 98–122

Machine translation in the news

A framing analysis of the written press

ORCID logo | University of Bristol

Machine translation (MT) is now firmly in the public eye. The media can reflect and influence the public perception of MT and, by extension, of translation itself, but the news coverage of MT has to date remained largely unexplored. This study draws on the news framing literature to present an analysis of how MT is described in the written press. Based on a sample of 284 MT-focused newspaper articles, the news reporting on MT was found to be significantly more positive than negative. This positive framing was unrelated to the launch of neural MT. Furthermore, the portrayal of MT in the press tended to lack nuance, with few instances that raised awareness of the technology’s use implications. The study calls for higher standards in the public discussion and promotion of MT and for more research on non-professional conceptualisations of translation technologies and their role in communication.

Keywords: machine translation, news coverage, news framing, content analysis, translation technology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Review of literature
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Sampling
    • 3.2Content analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Valenced frames: Quantitative analysis
    • 4.2Positive articles
    • 4.3Negative articles
    • 4.4Neutral articles
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.00023.nun
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