This study examines the effectiveness of the ‘post-editing’ method adopted in undergraduate language classes, for non-interpretation and non-translation major specifically. Recent technological developments have led the translation applications being more accessible for users. It is becoming extremely difficult to ignore the existence of the translation apps in language learning. By using the apps, everyone could translate without high level language skill. Having said that, even the most advanced technology is not able to translate precisely without post-editing.
This study analyzed Chinese-to-Korean translation works from 50 students at a University. 29 of them were beginner-level while the rest were intermediate-level. They were asked to translate parts of children’s picture books by editing the translation results from two most popular translation apps: Google Translate and Naver Papago. The most obvious finding to emerge from this study is that beginner-level students were more frequent to adopt translation contents without any editing. A possible explanation for this might be that beginner-level students felt difficulties in understanding the source text in Chinese. From their learning reflection, the most common words from the beginner-level students were ‘too much/overloading’ and ‘difficult’. In addition to the same term ‘difficult’, intermediate-level students emphasized on ‘naturally’ and ‘translating’.