“All those in favour will please say yea”: Understanding the Factors Behind Machine Translation Adoption at the Canadian Parliament

Jeniffer Leal-Wyss, Delaney Lothian, Gabriel Bernier-Colborne, Rebecca Knowles, Michel Simard


Abstract
Translators at the Canadian Parliament currently have access to a neural machine translation system as an optional tool integrated into their translation environment, whose output they can use for postediting (rather than translating from scratch); this provides a valuable opportunity to study the dynamics of MT adoption in professional settings. We report on a user study that investigates how and why translators choose to interact with this tool. Using a mixed-methods approach, we examined both human and technical factors that influence the adoption or non-adoption of the system. Drawing on our findings, we advocate for a user-centred approach to MT integration within professional translation workflows.
Anthology ID:
2026.eamt-1.36
Volume:
Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (Volume 1)
Month:
June
Year:
2026
Address:
Tilburg, The Netherlands
Editors:
Dimitar Shterionov, Eva Vanmassenhove, Mirella De Sisto, Fred Blain, Javad Pourmostafa Roshan Sharami, Lisa Lepp, Chiara Manna, Argentina Anna Rescigno, Alina Karakanta, Ayla Rigouts Terryn, Manuel Lardelli, Natalia Resende, Elena Murgolo, Janiça Hackenbuchner, Anna Zaretskaya, Miquel Esplà-Gomis, Thierry Etchegoyhen, Dagmar Gromann, Rachel Bawden, Barry Haddow, Sara Szoc, Mikel Forcada, Helena Moniz
Venue:
EAMT
SIG:
Publisher:
European Association for Machine Translation
Note:
Pages:
562–587
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2026.eamt-1.36/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Jeniffer Leal-Wyss, Delaney Lothian, Gabriel Bernier-Colborne, Rebecca Knowles, and Michel Simard. 2026. “All those in favour will please say yea”: Understanding the Factors Behind Machine Translation Adoption at the Canadian Parliament. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (Volume 1), pages 562–587, Tilburg, The Netherlands. European Association for Machine Translation.
Cite (Informal):
“All those in favour will please say yea”: Understanding the Factors Behind Machine Translation Adoption at the Canadian Parliament (Leal-Wyss et al., EAMT 2026)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2026.eamt-1.36.pdf