The impact of copper contamination and subsequent hydrogenation on recombination activity and hole-trap levels of misfit dislocations were investigated in p-type Si/Si_0.98Ge_0.02/Si structures. In the as-grown (noncontaminated) samples, dislocations were found to exhibit very low recombination activity, detectable with the electron-beam-induced current technique only at low temperatures. Deep-level transient spectroscopy revealed a dislocation-related hole-trap level at E_t=E_v+ 0.2 eV. The position of the observed level is close to the theoretically predicted hole-trap state of the intrinsic stacking fault of a dissociated dislocation. Contamination with a low copper concentration [5 (parts per 10⁹) ppb] gave rise to a large increase of the recombination activity of the dislocations and to the appearance of another dislocation-related defect level at E _t = E_v + 0.32 eV. Hydrogenation of the samples by a treatment with an acid solution and subsequent reverse-bias anneal at 380 K resulted in the evolution of the levels of substitutional copper and its complexes with hydrogen.