To MT or not to MT: An eye-tracking study on the reception by Dutch readers of different translation and creativity levels
This addresses the impact of translation creativity on reader experience, though it is incremental as it builds on existing reception studies with a small pilot sample.
The study investigated how different translation modalities (machine translation, post-editing, human translation, and original text) affect cognitive load in Dutch readers, finding that creative potential units increase cognitive load most in human translation and least in machine translation, with no effect from errors.
This article presents the results of a pilot study involving the reception of a fictional short story translated from English into Dutch under four conditions: machine translation (MT), post-editing (PE), human translation (HT) and original source text (ST). The aim is to understand how creativity and errors in different translation modalities affect readers, specifically regarding cognitive load. Eight participants filled in a questionnaire, read a story using an eye-tracker, and conducted a retrospective think-aloud (RTA) interview. The results show that units of creative potential (UCP) increase cognitive load and that this effect is highest for HT and lowest for MT; no effect of error was observed. Triangulating the data with RTAs leads us to hypothesize that the higher cognitive load in UCPs is linked to increases in reader enjoyment and immersion. The effect of translation creativity on cognitive load in different translation modalities at word-level is novel and opens up new avenues for further research. All the code and data are available at https://github.com/INCREC/Pilot_to_MT_or_not_to_MT