Do Translation and Post-editing Competences Develop in Synchrony? A Case Study on the English-Chinese Language Pair

With the progress of machine translation technology, post-editing (PE) has become a major working mode of translators and has been increasingly incorporated into translation teaching. While researchers have discussed the components of PE competence, which is based on human translation (HT) competence but requires additional skills, the acquisition of PE competence in comparison with HT competence has been understudied. This study has tracked the growth of 90 students’ HT and PE competences in the English-Chinese language pair by analyzing their performance in a translation course and their self-ratings of HT and PE competences. The course was delivered over a span of 16 weeks, and class hours were equally divided between HT and PE. Three parallel tests were organized to assess students’ HT and PE performance. Students were invited to assess their HT and PE competences at the beginning and end of the teaching period. Analysis of HT and PE performance shows that the HT and PE competences grow in synchrony and demonstrate the same pattern, but students’ PE performance is consistently better and improves faster. Analysis of students’ self-ratings indicates that, in their perception, their PE competence also improves faster. The results suggest that students can pick up the additional skills of PE fast and more class hours and practice need to be assigned to the cultivation of HT competence.