The Role of Machine Translation Quality Estimation in the Post-Editing Workflow

As Machine Translation (MT) becomes increasingly ubiquitous, so does its use in professional translation workflows. However, its proliferation in the translation industry has brought about new challenges in the field of Post-Editing (PE). We are now faced with a need to find effective tools to assess the quality of MT systems to avoid underpayments and mistrust by professional translators. In this scenario, one promising field of study is MT Quality Estimation (MTQE), as this aims to determine the quality of an automatic translation and, indirectly, its degree of post-editing difficulty. However, its impact on the translation workflows and the translators’ cognitive load is still to be fully explored. We report on the results of an impact study engaging professional translators in PE tasks using MTQE. To assess the translators’ cognitive load we measure their productivity both in terms of time and effort (keystrokes) in three different scenarios: translating from scratch, post-editing without using MTQE, and post-editing using MTQE. Our results show that good MTQE information can improve post-editing efficiency and decrease the cognitive load on translators. This is especially true for cases with low MT quality.