Editorial

Post-editing in practice: process, product and networks: as the title of this thematic issue suggests, this volume investigates two main aspects of post-editing: its practice on the one hand, and, from a broader perspective, the ways in which professionals in translation and beyond are affected by its realities. Pondering on the title, we were struck that its first and last words both evoke notions of interconnectedness and relationships. Post-editing implies relationships with at least two previous texts, work across different types of post-editing operations, collaboration between different professionals from subject experts to translators and human-machine interactions. The last word, ‘networks’ also denotes exchanges of ideas and information among individuals linked by skills, interests and a desire to communicate.

This made us think of translation defined by relations, a relevant thought at this point in time in the life of JoSTrans. JoSTrans, one of the few independent academic journals in Translation Studies, has been a journal of ‘relations’. Its story is a ‘network’ story in the best sense of the word: it was born and has thrived because its agents have worked successfully together. This issue sees a change of general editor from Lucile Desblache to Łucja Biel. After nearly 20 years, it was right for the journal to be led by a person from a different background, with new ideas and ambitions for the journal. The ‘relations’ ethos of the journal will still be at the heart of every issues, including this one.

With the recent advent of neural machine translation, which tends to be perceived as a disruptive technology, this special issue could not be more timely. Carefully edited by Lucas Nunes Vieira, Elisa Alonso and Lindsay Bywood, the issue explores post-editing from a range of perspectives and with a broad spectrum of empirical methods of product and process studies, including eye-tracking, TAPs, questionnaires and sociology of translation. The first part focuses on the post-editing process, exploring the fundamental topics of translation quality and cognitive effort through, inter alia, machine translation errors, correction rates, accuracy and fluency (Jia et al., Yamada, Carl and Toledo Báez), as well as more technical aspects of the use of resources in the CAT environment (Bundgaard and Paulsen Christensen) and metaphors in post-editing (Koglin and Cunha). The second part shifts focus to the reception of post-editing products by comparing them to from-scratch translation in terms of their readability (Screen) and by the degree of post-editing involved (van Egdom and Pluymaekers). The next part brings people into spotlight: it investigates attitudes and perceptions to machine translation (Rossi and Chebrot; Sakamoto). The final section approaches machine translation from the perspective of translator training by defining the post-editing competence (Nitzke et al.) and its integration in master’s programmes (Guerberof Arenas and Moorkens; Plaza Lara). The issue would not be complete without our landmark interviews with Joss Moorkens on translation technology and Carole Gilet on dubbing and animated programmes in France. With the richness of data offered by this special issue, we hope readers will find plenty of inspiration in it.

Lucile Desblache and Łucja Biel