Creativity and machine translation
What is it about?
Creativity is the factor that is said to differentiate humans from machines, and this also applies to translation. In this study we look at creativity in texts translated with machine translation and without it, also we look at the receptions of these texts by readers. We conclude that creativity is highest when professional translators intervene in the process, especially when working without any aid. We hypothesize that creativity in translation could be the factor that enhances reading engagement and the reception of translated literary texts among readers of literature.
Why is it important?
We offer a model for measuring creativity and another one to measure the reader experience of translated literary texts. The findings corroborate that a) creativity is higher in translations done by professional translators without any aid, post-edited versions come second and machine translations, third b) readers engage and received better translations done by professional translators without any aid, although they enjoy marginally higher the post-edited versions; the difference is only significant if these two versions are compared to the machine translated one.