# To MT or not to MT: An eye-tracking study on the reception by Dutch readers of different translation and creativity levels

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.19850 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19850/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 77 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Apr 2025.

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

- [Quantifying the Carbon Emissions of Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.09700/) (2019)
- [Post-editese: an Exacerbated Translationese](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.00900/) (2019)
- [The Impact of Post-editing and Machine Translation on Creativity and Reading Experience](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06125/) (2021)
- [Creativity in translation: machine translation as a constraint for literary texts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05655/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Creativity Bias: How Machine Evaluation Struggles with Creativity in Literary Translations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13596/) (2026)
- [Beyond Reproduction: A Paired-Task Framework for Assessing LLM Comprehension and Creativity in Literary Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.18169/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This article presents the results of a pilot study involving the reception of a fictional short story translated from English into Dutch under four conditions: machine translation (MT), post-editing (PE), human translation (HT) and original source text (ST). The aim is to understand how creativity and errors in different translation modalities affect readers, specifically regarding cognitive load. Eight participants filled in a questionnaire, read a story using an eye-tracker, and conducted a retrospective think-aloud (RTA) interview. The results show that units of creative potential (UCP) increase cognitive load and that this effect is highest for HT and lowest for MT; no effect of error was observed. Triangulating the data with RTAs leads us to hypothesize that the higher cognitive load in UCPs is linked to increases in reader enjoyment and immersion. The effect of translation creativity on cognitive load in different translation modalities at word-level is novel and opens up new avenues for further research. All the code and data are available at https://github.com/INCREC/Pilot_to_MT_or_not_to_MT