Lost in Translation? Students and the Hitches of Machine Translation of Academic Texts: Lecturers’ Perspectives

Abstract

Machine translation (MT) of academic texts is a trending phenomenon in the higher education context. Globalisation and internationalisation have seen a massive number of foreign students being admitted into higher education in countries where they study in the second or target language. Some of these students find it challenging to write a good academic text in the second language (i.e., English in the case of the United Kingdom). As a remedy, they resort to translating their work from the source text (ST) to the target text (TT) using MT like Google or Bing translation. Although some research has shown that these devices can be beneficial, others have found that these devices are far from being perfect and can produce texts that distort the intended meaning. In addition, research into MT in educational contexts have overlooked the views of lecturers who are the ones that read and assess students’ texts. This study aimed to contribute to the literature on MT by sampling the views of four academics from four different universities in the North West of England, United Kingdom. The findings of this research revealed that lecturers were very critical of students’ usage of MT of academic texts. Among the reasons advanced for this rejection were that students were ‘lost in translation’ using MT, and that MT did not help non-English speaking students learn the language. Consequently, students can produce texts that could negatively affect their grades when assessed. This paper has made some policy recommendations to universities regarding the problems of MT and submitted suggestions for further research in this area.

Construction of Literary Translation System Based on Digital Education

“…When people needed to translate the literature of other countries that they must read, many students used Google or machine translation. However, in this case, machine translation ignored the spirit contained in literary works [2]. De Vries Erik believed that there were many difficulties in computer text translation and evaluated the applicability of machine translation to literary translation.…”

They Get Away with Murder! UK Lecturers’ Frustration with Students’ Use of ‘Essay Mills’

“…RA also reported that some students can try to change the wordings of an outsourced essay by using synonyms. However, in such instances, the essay will not usually make sense as inappropriate translations can distort the whole meaning of a sentence [9].…”

“…Data was collected in 2018 as part of a pilot study for a doctoral study in education which sought to understand the experiences of lecturers and students on the effects of language and culture on students' academic achievement. Two peerreviewed papers have been previously published from that study [8,9]. This is the third and final paper to be written from that dataset.…”