POST-EDITING VS. TRANSLATING IN THE LEGAL CONTEXT: QUALITY AND TIME EFFECTS FROM ENGLISH TO SPANISH

• Published in: Revista de llengua i dret no. 78; pp. 56 - 72
• Main Authors: Killman, Jeffrey, Rodríguez-Castro, Mónica
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Barcelona Escola d'Administracio Publica de Catalunya 01-12-2022; Escola d'Administració Pública de Catalunya
• Subjects: Attitudes; Context; Editing; English language; Experiments; legal translation; Machine translation; neural machine translation; Phraseology; post-editing; Spanish language; Time; Translators
• ISSN: 0212-5056; 0212-5056; 2013-1453
• DOI: 10.2436/rld.i78.2022.3831

Limited research has addressed the use of machine translation (MT) with legal texts, while recent data-driven MT approaches have improved quality. The present study reports on the results of an experiment involving 26 translators who post-edited and translated legal texts from English to Spanish. The results show that post-editing led to quality and time gains. The quality gains were statistically significant. Quality was determined using standardized scoring criteria from a professional association, and the time taken to complete the tasks was logged using Translog-II. Participants completed questionnaires before and after the experiment to gather data about demographic variables, previous experience, perceptions of MT post-editing and their reflections on the experiment. There was general agreement among the participants that the machine translation output was beneficial, particularly at the terminological and phraseological levels. However, participant variables related to years of experience or translation credentials did not reveal a demonstrable impact on quality and time.