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Abstract
This paper investigates how post-editors of literary texts react and respond to the way metaphors have been translated by Neural Machine Translation (NMT) and Large Language Models (LLM). The results show that one in three metaphors in the output were changed by the posteditors, demonstrating that the translation of figurative language is indeed problematic in literary MT (LitMT). The responses indicate that the post-editors were aware of overly literal translations, though mostly for multiword expressions. Moreover, at times they found it difficult to determine whether solutions were acceptable. They rated the overall quality of the MT output as quite poor and stated that the post-editing was more work and more effort than it would have been translating from scratch. This supports previous studies arguing that post-editing constrains translators in their creativity and diminishes their sense of text ownership.- Anthology ID:
- 2026.eamt-1.47
- 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:
- 744–759
- Language:
- URL:
- https://aclanthology.org/2026.eamt-1.47/
- DOI:
- Bibkey:
- Cite (ACL):
- Aletta G. Dorst, Mayra O. Nas, and Katinka Zeven. 2026. Metaphors in Literary Post-Editing: Opening Pandora’s Box?. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (Volume 1), pages 744–759, Tilburg, The Netherlands. European Association for Machine Translation.
- Cite (Informal):
- Metaphors in Literary Post-Editing: Opening Pandora’s Box? (Dorst et al., EAMT 2026)
- Copy Citation:
- PDF:
- https://aclanthology.org/2026.eamt-1.47.pdf
Export citation
@inproceedings{dorst-etal-2026-metaphors,
title = "Metaphors in Literary Post-Editing: Opening Pandora{'}s Box?",
author = "Dorst, Aletta G. and
Nas, Mayra O. and
Zeven, Katinka",
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-1.47/",
pages = "744--759",
ISBN = "9789403901411",
abstract = "This paper investigates how post-editors of literary texts react and respond to the way metaphors have been translated by Neural Machine Translation (NMT) and Large Language Models (LLM). The results show that one in three metaphors in the output were changed by the posteditors, demonstrating that the translation of figurative language is indeed problematic in literary MT (LitMT). The responses indicate that the post-editors were aware of overly literal translations, though mostly for multiword expressions. Moreover, at times they found it difficult to determine whether solutions were acceptable. They rated the overall quality of the MT output as quite poor and stated that the post-editing was more work and more effort than it would have been translating from scratch. This supports previous studies arguing that post-editing constrains translators in their creativity and diminishes their sense of text ownership."
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%0 Conference Proceedings %T Metaphors in Literary Post-Editing: Opening Pandora’s Box? %A Dorst, Aletta G. %A Nas, Mayra O. %A Zeven, Katinka %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 dorst-etal-2026-metaphors %X This paper investigates how post-editors of literary texts react and respond to the way metaphors have been translated by Neural Machine Translation (NMT) and Large Language Models (LLM). The results show that one in three metaphors in the output were changed by the posteditors, demonstrating that the translation of figurative language is indeed problematic in literary MT (LitMT). The responses indicate that the post-editors were aware of overly literal translations, though mostly for multiword expressions. Moreover, at times they found it difficult to determine whether solutions were acceptable. They rated the overall quality of the MT output as quite poor and stated that the post-editing was more work and more effort than it would have been translating from scratch. This supports previous studies arguing that post-editing constrains translators in their creativity and diminishes their sense of text ownership. %U https://aclanthology.org/2026.eamt-1.47/ %P 744-759
Markdown (Informal)
[Metaphors in Literary Post-Editing: Opening Pandora’s Box?](https://aclanthology.org/2026.eamt-1.47/) (Dorst et al., EAMT 2026)
- Metaphors in Literary Post-Editing: Opening Pandora’s Box? (Dorst et al., EAMT 2026)
ACL
- Aletta G. Dorst, Mayra O. Nas, and Katinka Zeven. 2026. Metaphors in Literary Post-Editing: Opening Pandora’s Box?. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation (Volume 1), pages 744–759, Tilburg, The Netherlands. European Association for Machine Translation.