@inproceedings{farrell-2026-professional,
title = "Can professional translators identify machine-generated text?",
author = "Farrell, Michael",
editor = "Shterionov, Dimitar and
Vanmassenhove, Eva and
De Sisto, Mirella and
Blain, Fred and
Pourmostafa Roshan Sharami, Javad and
Lepp, Lisa and
Manna, Chiara and
Rescigno, Argentina Anna and
Karakanta, Alina and
Rigouts Terryn, Ayla and
Lardelli, Manuel and
Resende, Natalia and
Murgolo, Elena and
Hackenbuchner, Jani{\c{c}}a and
Zaretskaya, Anna and
Espl{\`a}-Gomis, Miquel and
Etchegoyhen, Thierry and
Gromann, Dagmar and
Bawden, Rachel and
Haddow, Barry and
Szoc, Sara and
Forcada, Mikel and
Moniz, Helena",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the {E}uropean Association for Machine Translation (Volume 1)",
month = jun,
year = "2026",
address = "Tilburg, The Netherlands",
publisher = "European Association for Machine Translation",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.eamt-1.35/",
pages = "551--561",
ISBN = "9789403901411",
abstract = "This study investigates whether professional translators can reliably identify short stories generated in Italian by artificial intelligence (AI) without prior specialized training. Sixty-nine translators took part in an in-person experiment, where they assessed three anonymized short stories - two written by ChatGPT-4o and one by a human author. For each story, participants rated the likelihood of AI authorship and provided justifications for their choices. While average results were inconclusive, a statistically significant subset (16.2{\%}) successfully distinguished the synthetic texts from the human text, suggesting that their judgements were informed by analytical skill rather than chance. However, a nearly equal number misclassified the texts in the opposite direction, often relying on subjective impressions rather than objective markers, possibly reflecting a reader preference for AI-generated texts. Low burstiness and narrative contradiction emerged as the most reliable indicators of synthetic authorship, with unexpected calques, semantic loans and syntactic transfer from English also reported. In contrast, features such as grammatical accuracy and emotional tone frequently led to misclassification. These findings raise questions about the role and scope of synthetic-text editing in professional contexts."
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<namePart type="given">Natalia</namePart>
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<namePart type="given">Elena</namePart>
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<abstract>This study investigates whether professional translators can reliably identify short stories generated in Italian by artificial intelligence (AI) without prior specialized training. Sixty-nine translators took part in an in-person experiment, where they assessed three anonymized short stories - two written by ChatGPT-4o and one by a human author. For each story, participants rated the likelihood of AI authorship and provided justifications for their choices. While average results were inconclusive, a statistically significant subset (16.2%) successfully distinguished the synthetic texts from the human text, suggesting that their judgements were informed by analytical skill rather than chance. However, a nearly equal number misclassified the texts in the opposite direction, often relying on subjective impressions rather than objective markers, possibly reflecting a reader preference for AI-generated texts. Low burstiness and narrative contradiction emerged as the most reliable indicators of synthetic authorship, with unexpected calques, semantic loans and syntactic transfer from English also reported. In contrast, features such as grammatical accuracy and emotional tone frequently led to misclassification. These findings raise questions about the role and scope of synthetic-text editing in professional contexts.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Can professional translators identify machine-generated text?
%A Farrell, Michael
%Y Shterionov, Dimitar
%Y Vanmassenhove, Eva
%Y De Sisto, Mirella
%Y Blain, Fred
%Y Pourmostafa Roshan Sharami, Javad
%Y Lepp, Lisa
%Y Manna, Chiara
%Y Rescigno, Argentina Anna
%Y Karakanta, Alina
%Y Rigouts Terryn, Ayla
%Y Lardelli, Manuel
%Y Resende, Natalia
%Y Murgolo, Elena
%Y Hackenbuchner, Janiça
%Y Zaretskaya, Anna
%Y Esplà-Gomis, Miquel
%Y Etchegoyhen, Thierry
%Y Gromann, Dagmar
%Y Bawden, Rachel
%Y Haddow, Barry
%Y Szoc, Sara
%Y Forcada, Mikel
%Y Moniz, Helena
%S Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (Volume 1)
%D 2026
%8 June
%I European Association for Machine Translation
%C Tilburg, The Netherlands
%@ 9789403901411
%F farrell-2026-professional
%X This study investigates whether professional translators can reliably identify short stories generated in Italian by artificial intelligence (AI) without prior specialized training. Sixty-nine translators took part in an in-person experiment, where they assessed three anonymized short stories - two written by ChatGPT-4o and one by a human author. For each story, participants rated the likelihood of AI authorship and provided justifications for their choices. While average results were inconclusive, a statistically significant subset (16.2%) successfully distinguished the synthetic texts from the human text, suggesting that their judgements were informed by analytical skill rather than chance. However, a nearly equal number misclassified the texts in the opposite direction, often relying on subjective impressions rather than objective markers, possibly reflecting a reader preference for AI-generated texts. Low burstiness and narrative contradiction emerged as the most reliable indicators of synthetic authorship, with unexpected calques, semantic loans and syntactic transfer from English also reported. In contrast, features such as grammatical accuracy and emotional tone frequently led to misclassification. These findings raise questions about the role and scope of synthetic-text editing in professional contexts.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.eamt-1.35/
%P 551-561
Markdown (Informal)
[Can professional translators identify machine-generated text?](https://aclanthology.org/2026.eamt-1.35/) (Farrell, EAMT 2026)
ACL