This paper explores translation trainees’ attitudes toward MT in terms of trust and reli¬ance. The data were collected within the LeMaTTT project, an empirical investigation of the potential impact of neural machine translation (NMT) on the development of info-mining and thematic competences in legal translator trainees. The sample con¬sisted of MA-level trainees with different educational backgrounds. Besides complet¬ing either a post-editing or a from-scratch translation task, they responded to a pre- and a post-task questionnaire investigating whether and how they use MT for specialised translation tasks and their trust in and perception of its output. The analysis considers within- and cross-group tendencies and takes account of the differences in (a) the types of tasks and (b) the participants’ experience and training in specialised translation and post-editing. The trends concerning the use and perception of MT are also correlated with perceived task difficulty and self-assessment, as reported in the questionnaires. Results suggest that MT is perceived as a reliable tool which speeds up the transla¬tion process and provides candidate terminological equivalents, though revision is re¬quired. It appears to generally reduce the perceived difficulty of the ST while increas¬ing the perceived quality of the TT in less experienced and competent trainees.
