Translator education as a collaborative quest for insights into the re-positioning of the human translator (educator) in the age of machine translation: the results of a learning experiment

ABSTRACT

Motivated by the urgent need to investigate the possibilities for re-positioning the human translator and his/her educator in the machine translation (MT) age, this article explores the dynamics of the human-machine dance in the translation classroom. The article discusses the results of a collaborative learning experiment which was conducted in an MA course. In the experiment, the students carried out the emergent professional tasks of MT post-editing, pre-editing and error annotation. The results showed that the experiment helped the majority of the students re-position themselves as future experts of MT-related tasks by developing task-specific self-efficacy beliefs and raising their awareness of their self-concept as human agents and of the added value they could create. The educators, on the other hand, gained insights into the challenges faced by the students in the experiment, during which the boundary between teaching and learning became blurred. The educators further witnessed, first-hand, the need to transform translation classrooms into platforms of collaborative learning, where all involved can work together to discover ways of creating human added value in emergent MT workflows, which also requires the re-positioning of the translator educator in the MT age.

KEYWORDS:

• translator education
• the human translator’s self-concept
• machine translation error annotation
• post-editing
• pre-editing

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper.

Notes

1. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the course was offered online.

2. The written consent of the 10 students was obtained for this study by a Participant Information and Consent Form which informed the students about the scope of the study and assured them that all personal details including their names and student numbers will be anonymised in the publication.

3. The results of the study on MT error annotation and post editing have been presented in the article titled ‘Post-Editing Oriented Human Quality Evaluation of Neural Machine Translation in Translator Training: A Study on Perceived Difficulties and Benefits’ (Öner and Öner Bulut 2021).

4. For a comprehensive study on the difficulties translation students experience interpreting post-editing guidelines, see Flanagan and Christensen (2014).

5. For a detailed study on the impact of pre-editing on translation quality, see Mercader-Alarcón and Sánchez-Martínez (2016).

6. Courses on technical writing are offered at the Department of Translation Studies of İstanbul 29 Mayıs University at undergraduate and graduate levels (see Alimen and Öner Bulut 2020; Öner 2018), and nine of the 10 students who participated in the study had previously attended these courses.