Gist MT Users: A Snapshot of the Use and Users of One Online MT Tool

Gist MT Users: A Snapshot of the Use and Users of One Online MT Tool Mary Nurminen University of Tampere Kalevantie 4 FI-33100 Tampere, Finland mary.nurminen@uta.fi Niko Papula Multilizer Kimmeltie 3 FI-02110 Espoo, Finland niko.papula@multilizer.com Abstract This study analyzes usage statistics and the results of an end-user survey to com- pile a snapshot of the current use and us- ers of one online machine translation (MT) tool, Multilizer’s PDF Translator1. The results reveal that the tool is used predominantly for assimilation purposes and that respondents use MT often. Peo- ple use the tool to translate texts from different areas of life, including work, study and leisure. Of these, the study area is currently the most prevalent. The re- sults also reveal a tendency for users to machine translate documents that are in languages they have some understanding of, rather than texts they do not under- stand at all. The findings imply that gist MT is becoming a part of people’s eve- ryday lives and that perhaps people use gist MT in a different way than they use publishing-level translations. 1. Introduction Online machine translation (MT) tools have been in use for almost 25 years and people are finding numerous ways to integrate MT into the process- es of their everyday lives. However, although research on professional translators’ use of MT has grown rapidly, the literature on all other us- ers of MT remains limited. This paper aims to contribute to that limited body of research with a study on the users of one online MT tool, Mul- tilizer’s PDF Translator. 1.1. Purpose of the Study Our study focuses on users of MT for assimila- tion, or scenarios in which people use raw, 1 pdf.multilizer.com unedited machine translated text for some other purpose than editing it for publication. Because users most often want just a basic understanding of the information (or gist) of the text, we term them gist MT users. We also use it because it is shorter than the term users of MT for assimila- tion; however, we use the two terms interchange- ably. The overall purpose of the study is to present a snapshot of the use and users of one online MT tool. Our questions concern who is using MT, where these users are, how they are using it, when they are using it, and in what areas of life they are using it. We had several motivations in doing the study. First, because online MT is in such wide use today, we can assume that the number of gist users is much larger than the number of profes- sional translator users. Yet the latter group has been studied far more than gist MT users. We believed it was time to put some focus on other user groups and we hoped to contribute to that with this study. Second, our literature review revealed only one gist MT user survey conducted in the past 10 years. We felt it was time to con- duct another one. Finally, this …

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