Building virtual communities of practice in post-editing training: A mixed-method quasi-experimental study

Abstract

Since post-editing of machine translation has become a widespread practice in the language service industry, post-editing training has been increasingly included in translation courses. The purpose of the study is to investigate the feasibility of implementing a virtual community of practice (VCoP) in training future post-editors that meet the market's needs. A VCoP refers to a social group sharing a common interest in an argument or a problem, interacting with each other by networks (Davis and Goodman 2014). Based on this concept, a VCoP method is postulated to facilitate online post-editing courses. It is a method in which students learn how to post-edit and how to manage a post-editing project by actively engaging in a VCoP. To test the feasibility of this method, a quasi-experimental study was carried out at Hunan University in China. Thirty first-year translation postgraduates participated in the study. Fifteen students were taught virtually using the VCoP method, while fifteen students were taught by the same tutor in a face-to-face classroom. A comparison of students' performance in the two post-editing classes indicated that the VCoP method fostered students' self-reflection and self-assessment, and ultimately helped improve post-editing quality. Students' perceptions of the VCoP method were generally positive, showing its usability.