Towards Sustainable Use of Machine Translation: Usability and Perceived Quality from the End-User Perspective

Abstract

Artificial intelligence-grounded machine translation has fundamentally changed public awareness and attitudes towards multilingual communication. In some language pairs, the accuracy, quality and efficiency of machine-translated texts of certain types can be quite high. Hence, the end-user acceptability and reliance on machine-translated content could be justified. However, machine translation in small and/or low-resource languages might yield significantly lower quality, which in turn may lead to potentially negative consequences and risks if machine translation is used in high-risk contexts without awareness of the drawbacks, critical assessment and modifications to the raw output. The current study, which is part of a more extensive project focusing on the societal impact of machine translation, is aimed at revealing the attitudes towards usability and quality as perceived from the end-user perspective. The research questions addressed revolve around the machine translation types used, purposes of using machine translation, perceived quality of the generated output, and actions taken to improve the quality by users with various backgrounds. The research findings rely on a survey of the population (N = 402) conducted in 2021 in Lithuania. The study reveals the frequent use of machine translation for a diversity of purposes. The most common uses include work, research and studies, and household environments. A higher level of education correlates with user dissatisfaction with the generated quality and actions taken to improve it. The findings also reveal that age correlates with the use of machine translation. Sustainable measures to reduce machine translation related risks have to be established based on the perceptions of different social groups in different societies and cultures.

A Systematic Review of Machine-Translation-Assisted Language Learning for Sustainable Education

“…With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, machine translation (MT) has gained popularity in recent years. MT tools are widely used among individuals, from pupils [1] to senior citizens [2]. In everyday life, this technology can be used for household tasks, news, personal communication, internet shopping, entertainment, and legal services [2].…”

“…MT tools are widely used among individuals, from pupils [1] to senior citizens [2]. In everyday life, this technology can be used for household tasks, news, personal communication, internet shopping, entertainment, and legal services [2]. Most importantly, the 21st century has witnessed much integration of MT into education, especially in language learning.…”

Is It Essential for Occupational Health and Safety Experts to Know the English Language? Results From Several Studies in Latvia

“…Good results can be achieved by creating a contextual curriculum and lesson plans, using a variety of innovative and attractive activities according to the interests of the OSH experts, and discussing topics that are close to their professional environment ( 24 , 25 ). Thirdly, the general digital skills of OSH experts should be improved through training that includes the use of different machine translation services and language technologies which are becoming common in everyday practice for a variety of reasons and purposes ( 26 ).…”

A Snapshot of Children’s Attitudes toward Machine Translation

“…Despite the rapid advances in MT technology, in some languages, especially low-resource languages, the quality of MT can be poor because of low amounts of parallel data [22,23]. Recent research has found that public perceptions of the potential and quality of MT are inadequate [24,25]. Nevertheless, members of the public, possibly including children, often use MT and consider its quality to be acceptable and equivalent to human translation [26].…”