Cover not available
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

ORCID logo | University of Surrey | University of Groningen
ORCID logo | University of Groningen

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.

Keywords: creativity, machine translation post-editing, literary translation, narrative engagement, translation reception
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
  • Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 November 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.20035.gue
References
Aziz, Wilker, Sheila Castilho, and Lucia Specia
2012 “PET: A Tool for Post-Editing and Assessing Machine Translation.” LREC, 3982–3987.Google Scholar
Bayer-Hohenwarter, Gerrit
2009 “Translational Creativity: How to Measure the Unmeasurable.” In Behind the Mind: Methods, Models and Results in Translation Process Research, edited by Susanne Göpferich, Arnt Lykke Jakobsen, and Inger M. Mees, 371: 39–59. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur.Google Scholar
2010 “Comparing Translational Creativity Scores of Students and Professionals: Flexible Problem-Solving and/or Fluent Routine Behaviour.” In New Approaches in Translation Process Research, edited by Susanne Göpferich, Fabio Alves, and Inger M. Mees, 391: 83–113. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur.Google Scholar
2011 “Creative Shifts as a Means of Measuring and Promoting Translational Creativity.” Meta: Journal des traducteurs/Meta: Translators’ Journal 56 (3): 663–692. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 “Triangulating Translational Creativity Scores.” In Tracks and Treks in Translation Studies: Selected Papers from the EST Congress, Leuven 2010, edited by Catherine Way, Sonia Vandepitte, Reine Meylaerts, and Magdalena Bartłomiejczyk, 1081: 63–85. New York, Amsterdam: Benjamins. Accessed August 2020. [URL]. DOI logo
Besacier, Laurent, and Lane Schwartz
2015 “Automated Translation of a Literary Work: A Pilot Study.” In Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Literature, 114–122. Denver, Colorado, USA: Association for Computational Linguistics. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bojar, Ondřej, Rajen Chatterjee, Christian Federmann, Yvette Graham, Barry Haddow, Matthias Huck, Antonio Jimeno Yepes, et al.
2016 “Findings of the 2016 Conference on Machine Translation.” In Proceedings of the First Conference on Machine Translation: Volume 2, Shared Task Papers, 131–198. Berlin, Germany: Association for Computational Linguistics. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Busselle, Rick, and Helena Bilandzic
2009 “Measuring Narrative Engagement.” Media Psychology 12 (4): 321–347. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cadwell, Patrick, Sheila Castilho, Sharon O’Brien, and Linda Mitchell
2016 “Human Factors in Machine Translation and Post-Editing among Institutional Translators.” Translation Spaces 5 (2): 222–243. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Castilho, Sheila
2016 “Acceptability of Machine Translated Enterprise Content.” Ph.D. Thesis, Dublin City University.Google Scholar
Cordingley, Anthony, and Céline Frigau Manning
2016 Collaborative Translation: From the Renaissance to the Digital Age. Bloomsbury Advances in Translation Series. London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.Google Scholar
Daems, Joke, and Lieve Macken
2019 “Interactive Adaptive SMT versus Interactive Adaptive NMT: A User Experience Evaluation.” Machine Translation 33 (1): 117–34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dixon, Peter, Marisa Bortolussi, Leslie C. Twilley, and Alice Leung
1993 “Literary Processing and Interpretation: Towards Empirical Foundations.” Poetics 22 (1): 5–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Doherty, Stephen, and Sharon O’Brien
2014 “Assessing the Usability of Raw Machine Translated Output: A User-Centered Study Using Eye Tracking.” International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 30 (1): 40–51. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dunne, Ciarán
2017 “Can Intercultural Experiences Foster Creativity? The Relevance, Theory and Evidence.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 38 (2): 189–212. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Göpferich, Susanne, Gerrit Bayer-Hohenwarter, Friederike Prassl, and Stadlober Johanna
2011 “Exploring Translation Competence Acquisition: Criteria of Analysis Put to the Test.” In Cognitive Explorations of Translation, edited by Sharon O’Brien, Continuum Studies in Translation Series, 57–85. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Green, Melanie C., and Timothy C. Brock
2000 “The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79 (5): 701–721. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Green, Melanie C., Timothy C. Brock, and Geoff F. Kaufman
2004 “Understanding Media Enjoyment: The Role of Transportation Into Narrative Worlds.” Communication Theory 14 (4): 311–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guerberof-Arenas, Ana
2012 “Productivity and Quality in the Post-Editing of Outputs from Translation Memories and Machine Translation.” TDX (Tesis Doctorals En Xarxa). Ph.D. Thesis, Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Accessed August 2020. [URL]
2017 “Chapter 7. Quality Is in the Eyes of the Reviewer.” In Translation in Transition: Between Cognition, Computing and Technology, edited by Arnt Lykke Jakobsen and Bartolomé Mesa-Lao, 188–206. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Accessed August 2020. [URL]. DOI logo
Guerberof-Arenas, Ana, Joss Moorkens, and Sharon O’Brien
2019 “What Is the Impact of Raw MT on Japanese Users of Word: Preliminary Results of a Usability Study Using Eye-Tracking.” In Proceedings of XVII Machine Translation Summit, 111. Dublin: European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT).Google Scholar
Guildford, Joy Paul
1950 “Creativity.” American Psychologist, 51: 444–454. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hakemulder, Jemeljan F.
2004 “Foregrounding and Its Effect on Readers’ Perception’.” Discourse Processes 38 (2): 193–218. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hewson, Lance
2016 “Creativity in Translator Training: Between the Possible, the Improbable and the (Apparently) Impossible.” Linguaculture 2016 (2): 9–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kenny, Dorothy
2000 “Lexical Hide-and-Seek: Looking for Creativity in a Parallel Corpus.” In Intercultural Faultliness. Research Models in Translation Studies I: Textual and Cognitive Aspects, edited by Maeve Olohan, 93–104. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.Google Scholar
Kenny, Dorothy, and Marion Winters
2020 “Machine Translation, Ethics and the Literary Translator’s Voice.” Translation Spaces, Fair MT: Towards ethical, sustainable Machine Translation 9 (1): 123–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuijpers, Moniek
2014 “Absorbing Stories: The Effects of Textual Devices on Absorption and Evaluative Responses.” Ph.D. Thesis, Utrecht University.Google Scholar
Kussmaul, Paul
1991 “Creativity in the Translation Process: Empirical Approaches.” In Translation Studies: The State of the Art. Proceedings from the First James S. Holmes Symposium on Translation Studies, edited by Kitty M. van Leuven-Zwart and Ton Naaijkens, Approaches to Translation Studies Series, 91: 91–101. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
1995 “Chapter 2. Creativity in Translation.” In Training the Translator Benjamins Translation Library, 101: 39–54. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2000a “A Cognitive Framework for Looking at Creative Mental Processes.” In Intercultural Faultlines: Research Models in Translation Studies: V. 1: Textual and Cognitive Aspects, edited by Maeve Olohan, 59–71. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.Google Scholar
2000b “Types of Creative Translating.” In Translation in Context: Selected Papers from the EST Congress, Granada 1998, edited by Andrew Chesterman, Natividad Gallardo San Salvador, and Yves Gambier, 391: 117–126. Benjamins Translation Library. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kussmaul, Paul, and Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit
2007 “Think-Aloud Protocol Analysis in Translation Studies.” TTR : Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction 8 (1): 177–99. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuzman, Taja, Špela Vintar, and Mihael Arčan
2019 “Neural Machine Translation of Literary Texts from English to Slovene.” In Proceedings of the Qualities of Literary Machine Translation, 1–9. Dublin, Ireland: European Association for Machine Translation. Accessed August 2020. [URL]
Malmkjær, K.
2019 Translation and Creativity. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mangen, Anne, and Don Kuiken
2014 “Lost in an iPad: Narrative Engagement on Paper and Tablet.” Scientific Study of Literature 4 (2): 150–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matusov, Evgeny
2019 “The Challenges of Using Neural Machine Translation for Literature.” In Proceedings of the Qualities of Literary Machine Translation, 10–19. Dublin, Ireland: European Association for Machine Translation. Accessed August 2020. [URL]
Moorkens, Joss, Antonio Toral, Sheila Castilho, and Andy Way
2018 “ ‘Translators’ Perceptions of Literary Post-Editing Using Statistical and Neural Machine Translation.” Translation Spaces 7 (2): 240–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Brien, Sharon
2011 “Towards Predicting Post-Editing Productivity.” Machine Translation 25 (3): 197. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rojo, Ana
2017 “The Role of Creativity.” In The Handbook of Translation and Cognition, 350–368. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rojo, Ana, and Purificación Meseguer
2018 “Creativity and Translation Quality: Opposing Enemies or Friendly Allies?” HERMES – Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 571 (June): 79. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rojo, Ana, and María Ramos Caro
2016 “Can Emotion Stir Translation Skill? Defining the Impact of Positive and Negative Emotions on Translation Performance.” In Reembedding Translation Process Research, edited by Ricardo Muñoz, Benjamins Translation Library, 1281: 107–130. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rojo, Ana, and Marina Ramos Caro
2018 “The Role of Expertise in Emotion Regulation.” In Innovation and Expansion in Translation Process Research, edited by Isabel Lacruz and Riita Jääskeläinen, American Translators Association Scholarly Monograph Series XVIII, 105–29. John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Runco, Mark A., and Garrett J. Jaeger
2012 “The Standard Definition of Creativity.” Creativity Research Journal 24 (1): 92–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saldanha, Gabriela
2005 “Style of Translation: An Exploration of Stylistic Patterns in the Translations of Margaret Jull Costa and Peter Bush.” Ph.D. Thesis, Dublin City University. Accessed August 2020. [URL]
Schmidtke, Dag, and Declan Groves
2019 “Automatic Translation for Software with Safe Velocity.” In Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit XVII Volume 2: Translator, Project and User Tracks, 159–166. Dublin: European Association for Machine Translation. Accessed August 2020. [URL]
Snover, Matthew, Bonnie Dorr, Richard Schwartz, Linnea Micciulla, and John Makhoul
2006 “A Study of Translation Edit Rate with Targeted Human Annotation.” Proceedings of Association for Machine Translation in the Americas 2001: 223–231.Google Scholar
Toral, Antonio
2019 “Post-Editese: An Exacerbated Translationese.” 17th Machine Translation Summit. Accessed August 2020. [URL]
Toral, Antonio, and Andy Way
2015a “Translating Literary Text between Related Languages Using SMT.” In Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Literature, 123–32. Denver: Association for Computational Linguistics. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015b “Machine-Assisted Translation of Literary Text: A Case Study.” Translation Spaces 4 (2): 240–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toral, Antonio, Antoni Oliver, and Pau Ribas-Bellestín
2020 “Machine Translation of Novels in the Age of Transformer.” In Maschinelle Übersetzung für Übersetzungsprofis, edited by Jörg Porsiel, 276–296. Berlin: BDÜ Fachverlag.Google Scholar
Toral, Antonio, Martijn Wieling, and Andy Way
2018 “Post-Editing Effort of a Novel With Statistical and Neural Machine Translation.” Frontiers in Digital Humanities 51: 1–11. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vanmassenhove, Eva, Dimitar Shterionov, and Andy Way
2019 “Lost in Translation: Loss and Decay of Linguistic Richness in Machine Translation.” 17th Machine Translation Summit (MTSummit2019), Dublin, Ireland, August 2019, Accessed August 2020. [URL]
Vaswani, Ashish, Noam Shazeer, Niki Parmar, Jakob Uszkoreit, Llion Jones, Aidan N. Gomez, Łukasz Kaiser, and Illia Polosukhin
2017 “Attention Is All You Need.” In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 30, edited by I. Guyon, U. V. Luxburg, S. Bengio, H. Wallach, R. Fergus, S. Vishwanathan, and R. Garnett, 5998–6008. Curran Associates, Inc. Accessed August 2020. [URL]
Venuti, Lawrence
1998 The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vieira, Lucas, Xiaochun Zhang, Roy Yodaule, and Michael Carl
2020 “Machine Translation and Literary Texts: A Network of Possibilities.” Presented at the Creative Translation and Technologies Expert Meeting, University of Surrey, May 29. Accessed August 2020. [URL]
Vinay, Jean Paul, and Jean Darbelnet
1958 Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais: Méthode de traduction. Paris: Didier.Google Scholar
Youdale, Roy
2019 Using Computers in the Translation of Literary Style: Challenges and Opportunities. Routledge Advances in Translation and Interpreting Studies Series. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar