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

Ramunė Kasperė, Jolita Horbačauskienė, Jurgita Motiejūnienė, Vilmantė Liubinienė, Irena Patašienė and Martynas Patašius
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Ramunė Kasperė: Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Kaunas University of Technology, 44249 Kaunas, Lithuania
Jolita Horbačauskienė: Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Kaunas University of Technology, 44249 Kaunas, Lithuania
Jurgita Motiejūnienė: Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Kaunas University of Technology, 44249 Kaunas, Lithuania
Vilmantė Liubinienė: Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Kaunas University of Technology, 44249 Kaunas, Lithuania
Irena Patašienė: Faculty of Informatics, Kaunas University of Technology, 44249 Kaunas, Lithuania
Martynas Patašius: Faculty of Informatics, Kaunas University of Technology, 44249 Kaunas, Lithuania

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 23, 1-17

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.

Keywords: machine translation; usability; quality; end-user perspective; Lithuania (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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