Difficulties in establishing common ground in multiparty groups using machine translation

When people communicate in their native languages using machine translation, they face various problems in constructing common ground. This study investigates the difficulties of constructing common ground when multiparty groups (consisting of more than two language communities) communicate using machine translation. We compose triads whose members come from three different language communities--China, Korea, and Japan--and compare their referential communication under two conditions: in their shared second language (English) and in their native languages using machine translation. Consequently, our study suggests the importance of not only grounding between speaker and addressee but also grounding between addressees in constructing effective machine-translation-mediated communication. Furthermore, to successfully build common ground between addressees, it seems important for them to be able to monitor what is going on between a speaker and other addressees.