The impact of metadata on translator performance: how translators work with translation memories and machine translation.

This thesis investigates whether and how translation metadata affect translator performance in a workflow that combines suggestions from translation memories and machine translation. The study is based on a translation process experiment with 10 professional translators working from English into Spanish in a workplace setting. The keystroke logging tools Inputlog and MTeval allowed for the collection of data on translation times and typing effort. BB FlashBack was used for screen and face recording. A Tobii eye tracker was used to identify how the translators shifted their attention between different parts of the screen. The final translations were assessed for quality by two professional reviewers using an error-score system. Finally, interviews were used for eliciting opinions from participants about certain aspects of their performance. The quantitative data were analysed with mixed-effects linear(ised) regression models. The results show that translation metadata affect translation time and typing effort, and that the effects vary according to the type of translation suggestion (exact matches, fuzzy matches, machine translation). As a complementary finding, the current study identified no significant correlation between the translators’ performances while typing and their performances while translating. The qualitative data obtained from the interviews show a mismatch between thetranslators’ perceived performance and their measured performance. Theytend to prefer an environment with translation suggestions and metadata, even when this environment does not correspond with better performance. Translators mentioned metadata as a helpful feature in the translationtool, among other reasons because metadata help them adapt their translation strategies more easily according to the suggestion type. Task familiarity was also identified as an important factor affecting translators’ perceptions. The results obtained in this study suggest the need to advance research on how translators interact with translation tools, with a view to increase not only productivity but also job satisfaction. I hope this thesis has also contributed to the field in terms of the methodology of workplace studies, by presenting some challenges and solutions. An important lesson is the need to find an optimal balance between ecological validity and data validity when conducting translation experiments in realistic scenarios.

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