Communicative failures in the machine translation of business texts from Ukrainian into English

Abstract

This article examines communicative failures that may arise during the machine translation of business-related texts from Ukrainian into English. It focuses on typical translation tasks encountered by students at the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Kyiv, such as translating press releases, website news, business correspondence, conference and symposium agendas, invitations, and announcements. For the purpose of analysis, the author has developed model segments that illustrate potential discrepancies between the original message, the machine-generated draft, and the suggested revision; these are not direct quotes from student assignments, nor do they represent the output of any specific machine translation system. The study demonstrates that a translation that appears formally coherent can, in fact, alter the subject matter of a message, the status of an agreement, the agenda of an event, or the expected action of the recipient. A post-editing procedure is proposed, based on verifying both the communicative function of the text and its factual content.