Post-editing translations into Maltese produced by the e-translation software : a case study

Abstract

Post-editing machine-translated texts is replacing the from-scratch translation. Despite the immense improvements when it comes to machine-translated software, there is still a long way to go for softwares to create perfect translations. This dissertation seeks to examine post-edited texts with English as the source language and Maltese as the target language and which were translated by the e-translation software, the official machine translation software of the European Commission. This dissertation is a case study involving one professional translator, who is the only participant of this study. The corrections implemented by the participant are then analysed and categorised according to Popović’s (2018) error categorisation system, which was adapted into Maltese. The texts analysed consist of different lengths and types and are provided by one participant who himself post-edited the texts. This study seeks to establish the most common error types of this MT software in relation to the EN-MT language pair, and thus this will help post-editors to direct their focus on the most common errors. Apart from analysing the main error types, this study also tries to find a link between the specific text types of the texts with regards to the number of errors found. This study culminates in the penultimate chapter, where the results are analysed and discussed with the aim of answering the research questions posed in the Introduction.