’It’s like talking about how I use a pencil’: Journalists’ use of machine translation in their work

Mary Nurminen, Nina Havumetsä


Abstract
This paper is the one of the first in-depth accounts of the use of machine translation (MT) by journalists. It reports on a study of Finnish journalists that was conducted mostly in 2024 and comprised an online survey with 68 responses and interviews with 10 journalists. Results revealed that participants fluently integrated MT into a variety of journalistic processes, with an emphasis on using it for assimilation and dissemination; that they relied largely on traditional online MT tools and tended to employ MT mostly with languages they have some competence in; and that they had some awareness of risk and strategies for mitigating it, but could benefit from guidelines and training on working with MT. The article contributes to research on the users and contexts for MT and, specifically, to its paraprofessional use in workplaces.
Anthology ID:
2026.eamt-1.42
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:
665–681
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2026.eamt-1.42/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Mary Nurminen and Nina Havumetsä. 2026. ’It’s like talking about how I use a pencil’: Journalists’ use of machine translation in their work. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (Volume 1), pages 665–681, Tilburg, The Netherlands. European Association for Machine Translation.
Cite (Informal):
’It’s like talking about how I use a pencil’: Journalists’ use of machine translation in their work (Nurminen & Havumetsä, EAMT 2026)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2026.eamt-1.42.pdf