Monitoring Post-Editing Habits of Student Translators via Screen-Recording

Abstract

In the era of high technology, translation as a profession has been digitized as a direct consequence of the recent developments in machine translation (MT) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) research. In today’s rapid flowing business environment, the sources and reliability of MT outputs are slightly questioned or ignored. Researchers also question whether professional translators and student translators should interact with MT software for better translation outputs. By adopting a focus group-oriented experiment with convenience sampling methodology, the study seeks to answer how student translators are exploiting or collaborating with MT software. Within the context of translator education, the study aims to uncover post-editing habits of student translators by making use of an online screen-recording tool. At the experimental stage of the study, seven student translators post-edit a literary text which was translated from English to Turkish by Google Translate. The obtained findings roughly reveal that student translators exhibit various post-editing habits which cannot be overgeneralized. Finally, the study concludes with recommendations for translation departments and translator trainers.