This study investigates how translation students handle register and pragmatic adjustment when post-editing machine-assisted translations between Arabic and English and evaluates the cultural and communicative adequacy of their interventions. Twenty-five post-edited texts were analyzed qualitatively within a cultural–pragmatic framework informed by House’s (2015) pragmatic equivalence, Nord’s (2018) functional adequacy, Venuti’s (1995) translator visibility, and O’Brien’s (2011) work on postediting effort, which this study extends to interpret the depth of revision. Of 372 culturally related edits identified, 24% addressed register and tone through recalibration of politeness, reverence, and emotional nuance. Students typically restored social decorum and interpersonal balance absent in machine translation (MT), exemplified by revisions such as “stood up → rose reverently.” While occasional hyperformalization occurred, most adjustments achieved high pragmatic and cultural adequacy. The findings conceptualize post-editing as a cultural–pragmatic act requiring empathy, contextual judgment, and intercultural competence, reaffirming the translator’s human role as a mediator of social meaning in technologically mediated translation.
Noureldin Abdelaal (Thu,) studied this question.