# The Impact of Post-editing and Machine Translation on Creativity and Reading Experience

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.06125 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06125/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 62 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Jan 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Lost in Translation: Loss and Decay of Linguistic Richness in Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.12068/) (2019)
- [Post-editese: an Exacerbated Translationese](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.00900/) (2019)
- [Machine Translation of Novels in the Age of Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14979/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Creativity in translation: machine translation as a constraint for literary texts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05655/) (2022)
- [Extending CREAMT: Leveraging Large Language Models for Literary Translation Post-Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03045/) (2025)
- [Optimising ChatGPT for creativity in literary translation: A case study from English into Dutch, Chinese, Catalan and Spanish](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.18221/) (2025)
- [To MT or not to MT: An eye-tracking study on the reception by Dutch readers of different translation and creativity levels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19850/) (2025)
- [Creativity Bias: How Machine Evaluation Struggles with Creativity in Literary Translations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13596/) (2026)
- [To be or not to be: a translation reception study of a literary text translated into Dutch and Catalan using machine translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02358/) (2023)
- [Multi-perspective Alignment for Increasing Naturalness in Neural Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08473/) (2024)
- [Beyond Reproduction: A Paired-Task Framework for Assessing LLM Comprehension and Creativity in Literary Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.18169/) (2026)
- [The impact of postediting on AI generative translation in Yemeni context: Translating literary prose by ChatGPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16704/) (2026)
- [Metaphors in Literary Post-Editing: Opening Pandora's Box?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.21178/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This article presents the results of a study involving the translation of a fictional story from English into Catalan in three modalities: machine-translated (MT), post-edited (MTPE) and translated without aid (HT). Each translation was analysed to evaluate its creativity. Subsequently, a cohort of 88 Catalan participants read the story in a randomly assigned modality and completed a survey. The results show that HT presented a higher creativity score if compared to MTPE and MT. HT also ranked higher in narrative engagement, and translation reception, while MTPE ranked marginally higher in enjoyment. HT and MTPE show no statistically significant differences in any category, whereas MT does in all variables tested. We conclude that creativity is highest when professional translators intervene in the process, especially when working without any aid. We hypothesize that creativity in translation could be the factor that enhances reading engagement and the reception of translated literary texts.