Een psychologisch perspectief op machinevertaling: de perceptie van vertaalkwaliteit in het vertaalonderwijs

Gys-Walt Van Egdom; Christophe Declercq

doi:10.18290/rh257310.4s

Published : 2025-06-13

Vol. 73 No. 10 Zeszyt specjalny (2025)

A Psychological Perspective on Machine Translation: The Perception of Translation Quality in Translator Training

Gys-Walt Van Egdom

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7521-6792

Christophe Declercq

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6687-120X

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh257310.4s

Abstract

Despite decade-long attention to machine translation quality in translation studies, the psychological aspect of the perception of this quality by translation students has been largely overlooked. Yet, the perception of machine translation quality significantly influences the decision to utilize machine translation as well as managing its output as part of the translation process. This article reports on a small-scale study examining second- and third-year students’ perceptions of machine translation quality in both their native language and a second language. Perceived quality was measured using “confidence scores.” Assessments were conducted under two conditions: immediate evaluation and post-discussion evaluation. The latter concerned the source text’s characteristics and the target publication’s purpose. The results provide insights into how aspiring translators relate to the synthetic language of machine translation and enrich our perspective on the role of language technology within translator training.

Keywords:

machine translation, perceived quality, L1 translation, L2 translation, synthetic text

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