RETRACTED: Critical thinking of a translator: Expanding the practice of using and editing machine translation

Abstract

• A correlation between critical thinking and post-editing errors was shown. • The availability of machine translation allows translators to use its capabilities,. • Computer programs are constantly being improved. The availability of machine translation allows both non-professionals and professional translators to use its capabilities, who use computer translation as a basis, and then analyze the resulting text and creatively process it in order to bring it as close to the original as possible. The aim of the present research is to study the influence of critical thinking on the quality of machine translation post-editing. The research was conducted at the College of College of Foreign Languages and Zhoukou Normal University and [BLINDED] University. The primary sample of respondents, heterogeneous in terms of age, gender, race, and ethnicity, was formed from 246 professional translators for whom the native language was Chinese. After determining the level of critical thinking using the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Test in the 2011 modification and the Critical Thinking Assessment Test (CAT), two experimental groups of respondents were formed: with high and low levels of critical thinking. These groups were provided with the same standardized texts for translation, using the same set of software tools, and subsequent editing. The translation results were evaluated by 12 experts with over 20 years of experience in translation. Errors were divided into groups: syntactic, lexical, grammatical, stylistic. The number of errors of each type and the average number of detected errors for each translator were estimated. The results obtained were compared using the Student's t -test using the Excel program and an online calculator. As a result of the study, the null hypothesis about no influence of a translator's critical thinking level on translation quality was refuted, and a direct significant correlation between a high level of critical thinking and a smaller number of post-editing errors was shown. It seems important to conduct further research to determine the influence of a translator's critical thinking, language proficiency, and experience on translation quality, since in this study, translators’ length of service and the level of language proficiency were not taken into account. The development of critical thinking as a key competence ensures that informed decisions are made that affect the quality of machine translation post-editing. Practical significance of the study is based on the opportunity to use of the proposed technique to study the influence of other types of translation on the formation of critical thinking of the translator. The further research can be based on the determination the influence of critical thinking, language proficiency, and experience of a translator on translation quality, since in this study the length of service and language proficiency of translators were not taken into account.