Risks for Lay Users in Machine Translation and Machine Translation Literacy
Lynne Bowker · 2024
Machine translation (MT) has triggered a global wave of techno-optimism. There is a general misconception that translating involves substituting words in the source language with words in the target language, and that computers can therefore handle any translation task easily and successfully in a matter of seconds. Against that backdrop, the democratization of MT has brought about communicative issues, particularly problems arising from uncritical use of MT in high-risk scenarios. Considering the need for MT literacy and the fact that the translation community is best equipped to support a more informed use of MT, this chapter advocates for the translation community to take action and reach out to those who do or may use MT tools or their output. Adopting a care ethics lens in line with the aims of the present volume, this chapter explores some of the reasons why using MT tools can be risky for people outside the language professions, as well as some strategies that can help to mitigate these risks and strengthen our collective MT literacy skills.