Corroborating The Effect Of Positive Technology Readiness And Technology Acceptance On MTI Students’ Machine Translation Behaviour In China

In the information age,having a good command of machine translation(hereafter MT)technology has become a must for professional translators.Till now,it has been15 years from the start of Master of Translation and Interpreting(hereafter MTI)program in China.Unfortunately,MT has been less noticed by researchers.Relatively few empirical studies have been carried out on MTI program students’ use of MT.With 161 MTI students from seven universities in China recruited as participants,this thesis aims to explore the relationships among MT behaviour,MT readiness and MT acceptance,under the framework of Parasuraman’s Technology Readiness Index(Parasuraman,2000;Parasuraman & Colby,2015)and Davis’ Technology Acceptance Model(Davis,et al.1989).The quantitative results illuminates the intermediate level of MTI students’ MT readiness,MT acceptance and MT behaviour;MT Innovativeness has a significant role on MT behaviour while MT Ease of Use has a less significant role on MT behaviour;MTI students’ Optimism on MT plays a positive mediating role between MT ease of use and MTI students’ MT behaviour.Implications of this study are as follows: much efforts need to be taken to improve MTI students’ use of MT;given the fact that MTI students’ optimistic attitude towards MT and their innovation in using MT,relevant MT courses should be included in the MTI program curriculum,with creative teaching model,so as to improve the quality of MTI program education;for MT developers,ease of use is also their focus while maintaining the translation quality of the MT system.