Translators' Usage Behaviors and Preferences of Neural Machine Translation Services

The translation industry has undergone a deep transformation with the emergence of machine translation services. These services have changed the roles and work process of translators with the opportunities and challenges they offer. Therefore, the present study seeks to investigate the behaviours and preferences of translators working in the English-Turkish language pair in terms of the extent to which they have integrated neural machine services into their professional lives. The study addresses key questions regarding the selection criteria of these services, including the most frequently used platforms, preferences for paid or free versions of the neural machine translation services and the specific reasons behind their choices. The methodological approach involves a detailed online questionnaire with both yes/no and open-ended questions including a total of 23 items. The participants include 14 translators, whose native language were Turkish and had an average experience of 8 years. Furthermore, the participant group presents diversity in geographic location, age, and specialization. Thematic analysis has been applied to identify patterns in participants' responses. The findings showed that participants thought neural machine translation services were a useful tool, that the majority of translators utilised the free versions, and that they thought their work processes would suffer if they were unable to use these services. This study provides valuable insights into the integration of machine translation services which use neural network into the professional lives of translators in Türkiye and the factors influencing their choices such as ease of use, speed, accuracy and accessibility, thereby providing an understanding of the evolving relationship between translators and current machine translation technologies based on neural network.