Temporal effort in academic writing and academic post-editing processes in the realm of Education
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7968.2024.e96629Keywords:
academic writing, machine translation, post-editing, temporal effortAbstract
Machine translation has become more popular in recent years and is now widely used by a broader public, such as laypeople, professional translators or those who need to produce academic texts in a language they do not master (Bowker & Buitrago Ciro, 2019). Even with the advances in technology, it is still necessary to proofread (or post-edit) machine-translated texts. However, this should not require more effort than producing texts directly in the target language. This study aimed to analyze the length of time to complete three different tasks involving L1 Brazilian Portuguese and L2 English: writing in the first language (EL1), writing in the additional language (EL2) and post-editing in the additional language (PEL2). The processes of these textual productions carried out by three PhD candidates in the field of education (P01, P02 and P03), who performed these tasks in different orders, were analyzed. Data was collected with a prospective questionnaire, Translog©-II program, Tobii Studio Eye Tracking Software©, OBS Studio, a smartwatch, and guided retrospective protocols. Results have shown that EL2 required more time from the participants, possibly due to their intermediate L2 proficiency level. Nevertheless, the time spent on this task was inversely proportional to its position in the order of the tasks. It has also been observed that machine translation has a facilitating effect on PEL2, requiring less time than EL2. Finally, it has been noticed that the temporal effort of EL1 and PEL2 altogether was inferior to that of EL2. Although post-editing is not performed very often in academia and requires more effort for more complex texts, results have suggested that it may be a more efficient form of writing in L2 when writing in L1 and post-editing in L2 require less time than writing in L2.
References
Bowker, L., & Buitrago Ciro, J. (2019). Machine Translation and Global Research: Towards Improved Machine Translation Literacy in the Scholarly Community. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Casula, M., Rangarajan, N., & Shields, P. (2021). The potential of working hypotheses for deductive exploratory research. Quality & Quantity, 55, 1703–1725. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-020-01072-9
Ferreira, A. A. (2010). Direcionalidade em tradução: uma investigação do processamento cognitivo de tradutores profissionais em tradução direta e inversa no par linguístico inglês-português. [Dissertação de mestrado]. Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. https://repositorio.ufmg.br/handle/1843/LETR-8SVNBP
Ferreira, A. A. (2013). Direcionalidade em tradução: o papel da subcompetência bilíngue em tarefas de tradução L1 e L2. [Tese de doutorado]. Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. https://repositorio.ufmg.br/handle/1843/MGSS-9BLN48
Fischer, A. (2008). Letramento acadêmico: uma perspectiva portuguesa. Acta Scientiarum. Language and Culture. 30(2), 177–187. https://doi.org/10.4025/actascilangcult.v30i2.2334
Fonseca, N. B. L. (2016). Pós-edição monolíngue: uma análise de indicadores de dispêndio de esforço temporal, técnico e cognitivo. [Tese de doutorado]. Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. https://repositorio.ufmg.br/bitstream/1843/LETR-AZQMPW/1/1499d
Gonçalves, J. L. V. R. (2020). Em busca de relevância no olhar: à procura de semelhança interpretativa através de dados de rastreamento ocular. Cadernos de Tradução, 40(esp. 2), 17–44. https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7968.2020v40nesp2p17
Hurtado Albir, A., & Alves, F. (2009). Translation as a cognitive activity. In J. Munday (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies (pp. 54–73). Routledge.
Kasperavičienė, R., Motiejūnienė, J., & Patašienė, I. (2020). Quality assessment of machine translation output: Cognitive evaluation approach in an eye tracking experiment. Texto Livre, 13(2), 271–285. https://doi.org/10.35699/1983-3652.2020.24399
Koehn, P. (2010). Enabling Monolingual Translators: Post-Editing vs. Options. In R. Kaplan et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the human language technologies: The 2010 annual conference of the North American chapter of the ACL. (pp. 537–545). Association for Computational Linguistics.
Koponen, M. (2016). Is machine translation post-editing worth the effort? A survey of research into post-editing and effort. The Journal of Specialised Translation, 25, 131–148.
Krings, H. (1986). Translation problems and translation strategies of advanced German learners of French (L2). In J. House & S. Blum-Kulka (Eds.), Interlingual and Intercultural Communication (pp. 263–275). Gunter Narr.
Krings, H. (2001). Repairing texts: empirical investigations of machine translation post-editing processes. (G. S. Koby et al., Trad.). The Kent State Univ. Press.
Lea, M. R., & Street, B. V. (1998). Student writing in higher education: An academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Education, 23(2), 157–172.
Neunzig, W. (2011). Empirical Studies in Translation: Methodological and Epistemological Questions. Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction, 24(2), 15–39. https://doi.org/10.7202/1013393ar
Santos, Z. B., & Cristofoleti, R. C. (2020). A escrita no contexto universitário: perspectivas para o letramento acadêmico. Revista Gatilho, 19(2), 94–113. https://doi.org/10.34019/1808-9461.2020.v19.27508
Sousa, M. S. C., & Fuza, A. F. (2021). Os discursos acadêmico-científicos voltados à internacionalização dos programas de pós-graduação. Revista Brasileira de Educação, 26, 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1590/s1413-24782021260019
Street, B. V. (1995). Social literacies: critical approaches to literacy in development, ethnography and education. Longman.
Street, B. V. (2009). “Hidden” Features of Academic Paper Writing. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 24(1), 1–17.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Cadernos de Tradução
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright Notice
Authors hold the copyright and grant the journal the right for their articles' first publication, being their works simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which allows the sharing of such works with its authorship acknowledged and its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are allowed to enter into separate additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or as a book chapter, with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal).
