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Study on Translators’ Recognition and Acceptance of NMT —Based on in-depth interviews

  • The Journal of Translation Studies
  • Abbr : JTS
  • 2020, 21(3), pp.9-35
  • DOI : 10.15749/jts.2020.21.3.001
  • Publisher : The Korean Association for Translation Studies
  • Research Area : Humanities > Interpretation and Translation Studies
  • Received : August 5, 2020
  • Accepted : September 9, 2020
  • Published : September 30, 2020

Sujung Kang 1

1숙명여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study delves translators’ acceptance of neural network machine translation (NMT) such as Google Translate and Papago. Translators have long served as communicators, bridging various cultures and societies. At a time when translators feel threatened by the emergence of NMT and when its utilization receiving conflicting opinions, this study uses in-depth interviews to explore translators’ attitude toward NMT and how such attitudes are formed. Through this study, it was found that translators recognized NMT, which was thought to threaten the position of translators, as a kind of tool. Translators think that while some language combinations and some text types allow for reliable quality of NMT, NMT's translation quality is not yet reliable when it comes to the sphere of professional translation, mainly performed by the interviewess. However, it was found that if peer translators recommend using NMT or if social awareness of NMT is improved, translators are also likely to accept NMT. Moreover, with the advent of NMT, translators predicted that the translation market would be polarized and divided into the general and the professional markets. Translators believe that post-editing is not a job fit for experts, but rather a tool that can be utilized by the general public and expect translation to evolve in a way that is better suits the needs of the professional translation market and not the general.

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