Artificial intelligence-grounded machine translation has fundamentally changed public awareness and attitudes towards multilingual communication. In some language pairs, the accuracy, quality and efficiency of machine-translated texts of certain types can be quite high. Hence, the end-user acceptability and reliance on machine-translated content could be justified. However, machine translation in small and/or low-resource languages might yield significantly lower quality, which in turn may lead to potentially negative consequences and risks if machine translation is used in high-risk contexts without awareness of the drawbacks, critical assessment and modifications to the raw output. The current study, which is part of a more extensive project focusing on the societal impact of machine translation, is aimed at revealing the attitudes towards usability and quality as perceived from the end-user perspective. The research questions addressed revolve around the machine translation types used, purposes of using machine translation, perceived quality of the generated output, and actions taken to improve the quality by users with various backgrounds. The research findings rely on a survey of the population (N = 402) conducted in 2021 in Lithuania. The study reveals the frequent use of machine translation for a diversity of purposes. The most common uses include work, research and studies, and household environments. A higher level of education correlates with user dissatisfaction with the generated quality and actions taken to improve it. The findings also reveal that age correlates with the use of machine translation. Sustainable measures to reduce machine translation related risks have to be established based on the perceptions of different social groups in different societies and cultures.

Technologies offered and used on the Internet play a significant part in the lives of children; nevertheless, little research has been done on how children view and use machine translation (MT). According to recent literature, there are various benefits to using MT in teaching/learning foreign languages, such as more fluent writing, more effective communication, and fewer errors. Nevertheless, the use of MT in classroom settings is often viewed as problematic by language teachers. Despite the fact that a vast number of students have used MT for various purposes or have tried experimenting with MT for certain academic or entertainment purposes, they seem to have mixed feelings about it. The present qualitative study is based on semi-structured interviews and aims to capture a snapshot of Lithuanian children’s perceptions and awareness of MT technologies. The results of the interviews reveal that children mostly find out about MT as a result of their own efforts and employ MT tools for a variety of purposes; however, at school no systematic guidance and/or support in terms of MT use is provided and children tend to perceive that their teachers generally hold negative attitudes towards MT.

Eye-tracking methods have become a valuable tool for reading research, as they provide significant evidence on the behavioral and cognitive performance of developing readers. They also help identify reading behavior patterns among children with neurodevelopmental conditions, such as reading difficulties (RD) or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In this paper, we reviewed relevant literature (73 empirical studies) from 2008 to 2023 (15 years). We documented how reading performance was measured through eye-tracking methodology among typical and atypical readers across various languages. To ensure a rigorous and transparent review, we adhered to the PRISMA framework, defined keywords, established inclusion and exclusion criteria, conducted data extraction, and employed a multi-phase selection process. We focused on research samples, stimulus designs, independent variables, eye-tracking systems, and metrics. The results indicated that research involving typically developing children mainly included participants from primary school and employed various eye-tracking methods, with English being the most studied language. Studies on children with RD and ADHD varied significantly in participants’ sample sizes, languages, and experimental designs. The discussion emphasizes the need for standardized data-collection procedures to enhance the reliability and comparability of findings, thereby supporting the development of effective interventions and instructional methods for reading difficulties.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), as a multidisciplinary field, combines computer science, robotics and cognitive science, with increasingly growing applications in many diverse areas, such as engineering, business, medicine, weather forecasting, industry, translation, natural language, linguistics, etc. In Europe, interest in AI has been rising in the last decade. One of the greatest hurdles for researchers in automated processing of technical documentation is large amounts of specific terminology. The aim of this research is to analyse the semi-automatically extracted artificial intelligence-related terminology and the most common phrases related to artificial intelligence in English and Lithuanian in terms of their structure, multidisciplinarity and connotation. For selection and analysis of terms, two programmes were chosen in this study, namely SynchroTerm and SketchEngine. The paper presents the outcomes of an AI terminological project carried out with SynchroTerm and provides an analysis of a special corpus compiled in the field of artificial intelligence using the SketchEngine platform. The analysis of semi-automatic term extraction use and corpus-based techniques for artificial intelligence-related terminology revealed that AI as a specialized domain contains multidisciplinary terminology, and is complex and dynamic. The empiric data shows that the context is essential for the evaluation of the concept under analysis and reveals the different connotation of the term.

Translation of culture-specific references (CSRs) is challenging and results in cultural compromises and even untranslatability, especially when cultures are different. The aim of this study is to identify strategies for translating CSRs from Lithuanian into English in tourist-related promotional texts. CSRs were categorised according to their types and translation strategies. The distribution of CSRs was almost proportional in all categories: organisations, material culture, social culture, names, and ecology. The translation strategies included literal translation (dominant), globalisation, preservation, addition, descriptive equivalent, omission and orthographic adaptation. The study contributes to the understanding of intercultural communication in the context of Lithuanian culture.