Hari Venkatesan


2023

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Technology Preparedness and Translator Training: Implications for Pedagogy
Hari Venkatesan
Proceedings of Machine Translation Summit XIX, Vol. 2: Users Track

With increasing acknowledgement of enhanced quality now achievable by Machine Translation, new possibilities have emerged in translation, both vis-à-vis division of labour between human and machine in the translation process and acceptability of lower quality of language in exchange for efficiency. This paper presents surveys of four cohorts of post-graduate students of translation from the University of Macau to see if perceived trainee awareness and preparedness has kept pace with these possibilities. It is found that trainees across the years generally lack confidence in their perceived awareness, are hesitant in employing MT, and show definite reservations when reconsidering issues such as quality and division of labour. While the size of respondents is small, it is interesting to note that the awareness and preparedness mentioned above are found to be similar across the four years. The implication for training is that technology be fully integrated into the translation process in order to provide trainees with a template/framework to handle diverse situations, particularly those that require offering translations of a lower quality with a short turnaround time. The focus here is on Chinese-English translation, but the discussion may find resonance with other language pairs. Keywords Translator training, Computer-Assisted Translation, Machine Translation, translation pedagogy, Chinese-English translation
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