Post-Editing Machine Translation (PEMT) as the preference method for university students in Indonesia

Abstract

Language translating process by Indonesian students is particularly suffered from many errors. Its defined strategy should be carefully watched due to completing its translating perfection. Thus, this study identifies the problematic translation ways commonly referred and used by university students in Indonesia. The mixed method using embedded design between qualitative and quantitative data with a case study approach was carried out to find the preferences of the translation method used by the students. The respondents are 50 English Department students from different levels of studying years. The result shows that Post-Editing Machine Translation (PEMT) was preferred among other translating methods. The reasons are related to the ease and quality of the translation work. 76.90% of the students responded and chose to have PEMT as the preference. However, there were only 53.8% of them implementing PEMT as the translating process, and 38.5% were familiar with Machine Translation (MT) without post-editing instead. It indicates an inconsistency in the use of the translation methods as each of them experienced and chose different type of methods. However, PEMT was placed as the most referred translating method used by the students. This suggests that the presence of technology is well utilized while still paying attention to the quality of the translation through the post-editing process.