Machine Translation Case Study

3. Methodology The methodology will include the methods used in my case study. My intentions are to describe the methods of collecting data which was an interview; it is a very used method to collect primary data, as well it provides instant and accurate feedback. This is one of the ways to get clarifications and explanations from interviewees. The interviews were with 5 different local translation offices that were selected randomly and are located in Abudhabi. It was done face to face and name of interviewees and offices are kept unknown for privacy matters. The interview included eight questions, started generally then it got more specific and straight to the point. The purposes of the interviews were to know the percentage of using
• Old school is better.
• It increases problems with customers. Office number 5 the only one who uses machine translation because it is faster, but they made sure to mention the importance of editing and that machine are not qualified to translate by its own.
Question 6: Do you use MT in certain texts or all texts? Office number 5 mentioned that they are using machine translation usually in commercial and business texts. There was no answer from other offices. The purpose from the question is to know in what field specifically machine translation is used.
Question 7: After finding the translation by MT do you use it as it is or do you edit it? pre/post edit? The purpose of the question to know the quality of translation that machine produces from accuracy point, as well to know what kind of edit the office is using. Office number 5 said they edit if it requires, usually they are using post edit which is better but using both are more accurate.
Question 8: What is the percentage of changes that you do to the Translation? According to office number 1 experiment, the percentage of changes was 70% which is closer to retranslating instead of editing. Office number 5 said
Machine translation is not qualified to be used by itself. It must be edited carefully by professional translators. The results of the case study are obvious and clear. I found that the majority are not using machine translation, they are relying more on translation memory or human translation regarding many reasons. So the answer of my research question ( machine translation is not a supportive tool to translators?) as it appears in my case study that its not, but we have to put into our consideration the sensitivity of the topic and the number of offices are not enough to generalize. In my opinion using machine translation is not a mistake but it must be used wisely and with limits that would not affect our career as translators. It depends on each translator and what suits them better. But the translation that is done by machines, should mentioned that in the translation. So it’s a matter of preference and wise using of machines.
For further researches, they must find a way that can make translation offices more open into the subject and can express what they are using comfortably maybe by using methods other than interviews to come up with better results. As well collect data from wider range of translation office in other