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ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF USING MACHINE TRANSLATION IN TRANSLATION PEDAGOGY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF INSTRUCTORS AND LEARNERS
Corresponding Author(s) : Mohamad Djavad Akbari Motlaq
Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews,
Vol. 8 No. 4 (2020): July
Abstract
Purpose of the study: This paper embodies research on the introduction of machine translation (MT) into translation teaching and learning from the perspectives of learners and instructors/teachers. Four suppositions of employment of MT in translation classes are observed and examined here: MT as a weak (or peripheral) tool, MT as a useful (or essential) tool; MT as a professional treatment; and MT as a CATI tool.
Methodology: The objective is achieved using an experimental-survey method with a theory of ‘action about reasons’ (technology acceptance model) adapted from Davis, Bagozzi, and Warshaw’s (1989) work as its framework. The survey tool is done through a closed and open-ended questionnaire while the ‘experiment’ takes the form of MT introduction practice exercises in the classroom. One hundred Iranian undergraduate students from a translation course with MT in its syllabus and thirty translation instructors make up the population for this study.
Main Findings: In general, students found MT to be useful for producing their translation and seemed, with good exposure through practice, encouraged to use it. The translation educators too saw its benefits but would only be persuaded seriously to utilize it in their translation classrooms when MT is found to produce a much higher quality of output. Otherwise, the disadvantages might outweigh the benefits and thus make the integration of MT into translation teaching not worthwhile.
Applications of this study: Understanding reservations and motivations of translation students and translation instructors from their responses enable translation educators and programmers to redesign their teaching to lessen the challenges and at the same grow their confidence in handling MT and guide them towards efficient and effective use.
Novelty/Originality of this study: To date, the testing of MT in teaching has been done in language education per se. In this study, MT is examined as a tool for better translation teaching, and not as a mode of translation as opposed to human translation. This lends originality to the study.
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- ALPAC [Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee] (1966). Language and Machines: Computers in Translation and Linguistics. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, Publication 1416.
- AMTA (1994). Technology Partnerships for Crossing the Language Barrier: Proceedings of the first conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas. October 5-8, Columbia, MD.
- Anderson, D. D. (1995) Machine translation as a tool in second language learning. CALICO, 13(1): 68-97.
- Baker, Mona, and Saldanha, Gabriela (eds) (2012). Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. New York: Routledge.
- Balkin, Lorna, et al. (1991). “Declarative evaluation of an MT system: practical experiences.†Applied Computer Translation 1, 3 (July-September), 49-59.
- Ball, R.V. (1989) Computer-assisted translation and the modern language curriculum. CSS File 8: 52 -55.
- Belam, J. (2002) Instruction machine translation evaluation by assessed project work. In: 6th EAMT Workshop Instruction Machine Translation, Manchester, 131-136.
- Belam, J. (2003) Buying up to falling: a deductive approach to instruction post-editing. In: Proceedings of the Workshop on Instruction Translation Technologies and Tools. MT Summit IX. New Orleans, United States, 1-10.
- Campbell, S. 2002. Translation in the context of EFL – The Fifth Macroskill? TEFLIN, 13: 1
- Chan, Sin-wai (ed.) (2015). Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Technology. London/New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315749129 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315749129
- Cohen, A. and Brooks-Carson, A. 2001. Research on direct versus translated writing: Students' strategies and their results. The Modern Language Journal, 85: 169–188. https://doi.org/10.1111/0026-7902.00103 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/0026-7902.00103
- Corness, P. (1985) The ALPS computer-assisted translation system in an academic environment. In: Picken, C. (ed.), Translating and the Computer 7. London: Aslib, 118-127.
- Davis, F.D, Bagozzi, R.P. and Warshaw, P.R. (1989) User acceptance of computer technology: a comparison of two theoretical models. Management Science, 35(8): 982–1003. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.35.8.982 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.35.8.982
- DeCesaris, J. A. (1995) Computerized Translation Managers as Instruction Aids. In: Dollerup, C. and Appel, V. (eds.), Instruction Translation and Translating 3: New Horizons, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 263-269. https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.16.36dec DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.16.36dec
- Dugast, Loïc, Senellart, Jean, and Philipp Koehn (2007). “Statistical post-editing on SYSTRAN's rule-based translation system.†Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Statistical Machine Translation, Prague, June 2007. Association for Computational Linguistics, 220-223. ttps://doi.org/10.3115/1626355.1626387 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3115/1626355.1626387
- Fiederer, R. and O'Brien, S. 2009. Quality and machine translation: A realistic objective? The Journal of Specialized Translation, 11: 52–72.
- Flanagan, Mary A. (1994). “Error Classification for MT Evaluation.†AMTA (1994, 65-72).
- French, R. J. (1991) Machine translation. In: Brierley, W. and Kemble I.R. (eds.), Computers as a Tool in Translation learning. Chichester: Ellis Horwood Limited, 55-69.
- Garcia, I. 2010. Is machine translation ready yet? Target, 22(1): 7–21. https://doi.org/10.1075/target.22.1.02gar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/target.22.1.02gar
- Gaspari, F. (2007). The Role of Online MT in Webpage Translation. Ph.D. Thesis. The University of Manchester.
- Goodman, Kenneth, and Sergei Nirenburg (1991) Eds. The KBMT Project: A Case Study in Knowledge –based Machine Translation. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
- Guerberof, A. 2009. Productivity and quality in the post-editing of outputs from translation memories and machine translation. Localization Focus, 7(1): 11–21.
- Hutchins, W.J. (1986). Machine Translation: Past, Present, Future. New York: John Wiley &Sons.
- Isahara, H. et al. (1994). “Technical Evaluation of MT Systems from the Developer’s Point of View: Exploiting Test-sets for Quality Evaluation.†AMTA (1994, 126-133).
- Kaye, P. 2009. Translation activities in the language classroom. Teaching English, Retrieved from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/print/4726
- Kliffer, M. D. (2005) An experiment in MT post-editing by a class of intermediate/advanced French majors. In: Proceedings EAMT 10th Annual Conference, 30th-31st May, Budapest, 160-165.
- Kliffer, M. D. An experiment in MT post-editing by a class of intermediate/advanced French majors. In Proceedings of EAMT, 10th Annual Conference. Budapest, Hungary.
- Kobayashi, H. and Rinnert, C. 1994. “Effects of first language on second language writing: Translation versus direct composition. In A.H. Cumming (Ed.)â€. In Bilingual performance in reading and writing, 223–255. Ann Arbor, MI: Research Club in Language Learning.
- Koehn, Philipp (2017). “Neural Machine Translation.†Statistical Machine Translation. Chapter 13. Johns Hopkins University. arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.07809
- La Torre, M.D. (1999) A web-based resource to improve translation skills. ReCALL, 11 (3): 41-49.
- Lewis, D. (1997) Machine translation in a modern languages curriculum. Computer-assisted Translation learning, 10: 255-271. https://doi.org/10.1080/0958822970100305 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0958822970100305
- Liu, Qun, and Xiaojun Zhang (2015). “Machine Translation: General.†Sin-wai Chan (ed.) (2015). Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Technology. New York: Routledge, 105-119.
- Moorkens, Joss, O’Brien, Sharon, da Silva, Igor A.L., de Lima Fonseca, Norma B., and Fabio Alves (2015). “Correlations of perceived post-editing effort with measurements of actual effort. Machine Translation 29(3-4), 267-284. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10590-015-9175-2 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10590-015-9175-2
- Neal, Jeanette G., et al. (1992). An Evaluation Methodology for Natural Language Processing Systems. Griffiss Air Force Base, New York: Rome Laboratory, Air Force Materiel Command. https://doi.org/10.21236/ADA263301 DOI: https://doi.org/10.21236/ADA263301
- Niño, A. (2004) Recycling MT: A course on TRANSLATION writing via MT post-editing. Paper presented at CLUK (Computational Linguistics United Kingdom 7th Annual Research Colloquium), 6th and 7th January 2004 at the University of Birmingham, UK, 179-187.
- Niño, A. (2009) Machine translation in foreign translation learning: Language learners' and instructors' perceptions of its advantages and disadvantages. ReCALL 21 (2): pp.105-122. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344009000172 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344009000172
- Niño, A. 2008. Evaluating the use of machine translation post-editing in the foreign language class. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 21(1): 29–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588220701865482 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09588220701865482
- Nirenburg, Sergei, et al. (1992). Machine Translation: A Knowledge-based Approach. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
- NSF (1992). MT Evaluation: Basis for Future Directions. Proceedings of a workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation. November 2-3, San Diego, CA.
- Richmond, I.M. (1994) Doing it backward: Using translation software to teach target language grammaticality. In CALL 7 (1): 65-78. https://doi.org/10.1080/0958822940070106 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0958822940070106
- Shei, C.-C. 2002. “Teaching MT through pre-editing: Three case studiesâ€. In 6th EAMT Workshop Teaching Machine Translation 89–98. Manchester.
- Shei, C-C (2002a) Combining Translation into the Second Language and Second Translation learning: An Integrated Computational Approach. Ph.D. Thesis. The University of Edinburgh.
- Shei. C-C (2002b) Instruction MT through pre-editing: Three case studies. In: 6th EAMT Workshop Instruction Machine Translation. Manchester, 89-98.
- Slocum, Jonathan (1988), Ed. Machine Translation Systems. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Somers, H. 2003. “Machine translation in the classroomâ€. In Computers and translation. A translator's guide, Edited by: Somers, H. 319–340. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.35.20som DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.35.20som
- Systran. (2009). Report Document 2009. http://www.systransoft.be/download/annual-reports/systran-annual-report-2009.pdf (referred in 20.12.2018).
- Thriveni, C. (2002). Cultural elements in translation: The Indian perspective. Translation Journal. 6/1 Retrieved on Nov. 2nd, 2009 from http://accurapid.com/journal/19culture.htm
- Vauquois, B. (1968). A survey of formal grammars and algorithms for recognition and transformation in machine translation, IFIP Congress-68 (Edinburgh), pp. 254-260.
References
ALPAC [Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee] (1966). Language and Machines: Computers in Translation and Linguistics. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, Publication 1416.
AMTA (1994). Technology Partnerships for Crossing the Language Barrier: Proceedings of the first conference of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas. October 5-8, Columbia, MD.
Anderson, D. D. (1995) Machine translation as a tool in second language learning. CALICO, 13(1): 68-97.
Baker, Mona, and Saldanha, Gabriela (eds) (2012). Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. New York: Routledge.
Balkin, Lorna, et al. (1991). “Declarative evaluation of an MT system: practical experiences.†Applied Computer Translation 1, 3 (July-September), 49-59.
Ball, R.V. (1989) Computer-assisted translation and the modern language curriculum. CSS File 8: 52 -55.
Belam, J. (2002) Instruction machine translation evaluation by assessed project work. In: 6th EAMT Workshop Instruction Machine Translation, Manchester, 131-136.
Belam, J. (2003) Buying up to falling: a deductive approach to instruction post-editing. In: Proceedings of the Workshop on Instruction Translation Technologies and Tools. MT Summit IX. New Orleans, United States, 1-10.
Campbell, S. 2002. Translation in the context of EFL – The Fifth Macroskill? TEFLIN, 13: 1
Chan, Sin-wai (ed.) (2015). Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Technology. London/New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315749129 DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315749129
Cohen, A. and Brooks-Carson, A. 2001. Research on direct versus translated writing: Students' strategies and their results. The Modern Language Journal, 85: 169–188. https://doi.org/10.1111/0026-7902.00103 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/0026-7902.00103
Corness, P. (1985) The ALPS computer-assisted translation system in an academic environment. In: Picken, C. (ed.), Translating and the Computer 7. London: Aslib, 118-127.
Davis, F.D, Bagozzi, R.P. and Warshaw, P.R. (1989) User acceptance of computer technology: a comparison of two theoretical models. Management Science, 35(8): 982–1003. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.35.8.982 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.35.8.982
DeCesaris, J. A. (1995) Computerized Translation Managers as Instruction Aids. In: Dollerup, C. and Appel, V. (eds.), Instruction Translation and Translating 3: New Horizons, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 263-269. https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.16.36dec DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.16.36dec
Dugast, Loïc, Senellart, Jean, and Philipp Koehn (2007). “Statistical post-editing on SYSTRAN's rule-based translation system.†Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Statistical Machine Translation, Prague, June 2007. Association for Computational Linguistics, 220-223. ttps://doi.org/10.3115/1626355.1626387 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3115/1626355.1626387
Fiederer, R. and O'Brien, S. 2009. Quality and machine translation: A realistic objective? The Journal of Specialized Translation, 11: 52–72.
Flanagan, Mary A. (1994). “Error Classification for MT Evaluation.†AMTA (1994, 65-72).
French, R. J. (1991) Machine translation. In: Brierley, W. and Kemble I.R. (eds.), Computers as a Tool in Translation learning. Chichester: Ellis Horwood Limited, 55-69.
Garcia, I. 2010. Is machine translation ready yet? Target, 22(1): 7–21. https://doi.org/10.1075/target.22.1.02gar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/target.22.1.02gar
Gaspari, F. (2007). The Role of Online MT in Webpage Translation. Ph.D. Thesis. The University of Manchester.
Goodman, Kenneth, and Sergei Nirenburg (1991) Eds. The KBMT Project: A Case Study in Knowledge –based Machine Translation. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
Guerberof, A. 2009. Productivity and quality in the post-editing of outputs from translation memories and machine translation. Localization Focus, 7(1): 11–21.
Hutchins, W.J. (1986). Machine Translation: Past, Present, Future. New York: John Wiley &Sons.
Isahara, H. et al. (1994). “Technical Evaluation of MT Systems from the Developer’s Point of View: Exploiting Test-sets for Quality Evaluation.†AMTA (1994, 126-133).
Kaye, P. 2009. Translation activities in the language classroom. Teaching English, Retrieved from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/print/4726
Kliffer, M. D. (2005) An experiment in MT post-editing by a class of intermediate/advanced French majors. In: Proceedings EAMT 10th Annual Conference, 30th-31st May, Budapest, 160-165.
Kliffer, M. D. An experiment in MT post-editing by a class of intermediate/advanced French majors. In Proceedings of EAMT, 10th Annual Conference. Budapest, Hungary.
Kobayashi, H. and Rinnert, C. 1994. “Effects of first language on second language writing: Translation versus direct composition. In A.H. Cumming (Ed.)â€. In Bilingual performance in reading and writing, 223–255. Ann Arbor, MI: Research Club in Language Learning.
Koehn, Philipp (2017). “Neural Machine Translation.†Statistical Machine Translation. Chapter 13. Johns Hopkins University. arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.07809
La Torre, M.D. (1999) A web-based resource to improve translation skills. ReCALL, 11 (3): 41-49.
Lewis, D. (1997) Machine translation in a modern languages curriculum. Computer-assisted Translation learning, 10: 255-271. https://doi.org/10.1080/0958822970100305 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0958822970100305
Liu, Qun, and Xiaojun Zhang (2015). “Machine Translation: General.†Sin-wai Chan (ed.) (2015). Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Technology. New York: Routledge, 105-119.
Moorkens, Joss, O’Brien, Sharon, da Silva, Igor A.L., de Lima Fonseca, Norma B., and Fabio Alves (2015). “Correlations of perceived post-editing effort with measurements of actual effort. Machine Translation 29(3-4), 267-284. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10590-015-9175-2 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10590-015-9175-2
Neal, Jeanette G., et al. (1992). An Evaluation Methodology for Natural Language Processing Systems. Griffiss Air Force Base, New York: Rome Laboratory, Air Force Materiel Command. https://doi.org/10.21236/ADA263301 DOI: https://doi.org/10.21236/ADA263301
Niño, A. (2004) Recycling MT: A course on TRANSLATION writing via MT post-editing. Paper presented at CLUK (Computational Linguistics United Kingdom 7th Annual Research Colloquium), 6th and 7th January 2004 at the University of Birmingham, UK, 179-187.
Niño, A. (2009) Machine translation in foreign translation learning: Language learners' and instructors' perceptions of its advantages and disadvantages. ReCALL 21 (2): pp.105-122. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344009000172 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344009000172
Niño, A. 2008. Evaluating the use of machine translation post-editing in the foreign language class. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 21(1): 29–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588220701865482 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09588220701865482
Nirenburg, Sergei, et al. (1992). Machine Translation: A Knowledge-based Approach. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
NSF (1992). MT Evaluation: Basis for Future Directions. Proceedings of a workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation. November 2-3, San Diego, CA.
Richmond, I.M. (1994) Doing it backward: Using translation software to teach target language grammaticality. In CALL 7 (1): 65-78. https://doi.org/10.1080/0958822940070106 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0958822940070106
Shei, C.-C. 2002. “Teaching MT through pre-editing: Three case studiesâ€. In 6th EAMT Workshop Teaching Machine Translation 89–98. Manchester.
Shei, C-C (2002a) Combining Translation into the Second Language and Second Translation learning: An Integrated Computational Approach. Ph.D. Thesis. The University of Edinburgh.
Shei. C-C (2002b) Instruction MT through pre-editing: Three case studies. In: 6th EAMT Workshop Instruction Machine Translation. Manchester, 89-98.
Slocum, Jonathan (1988), Ed. Machine Translation Systems. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Somers, H. 2003. “Machine translation in the classroomâ€. In Computers and translation. A translator's guide, Edited by: Somers, H. 319–340. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.35.20som DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.35.20som
Systran. (2009). Report Document 2009. http://www.systransoft.be/download/annual-reports/systran-annual-report-2009.pdf (referred in 20.12.2018).
Thriveni, C. (2002). Cultural elements in translation: The Indian perspective. Translation Journal. 6/1 Retrieved on Nov. 2nd, 2009 from http://accurapid.com/journal/19culture.htm
Vauquois, B. (1968). A survey of formal grammars and algorithms for recognition and transformation in machine translation, IFIP Congress-68 (Edinburgh), pp. 254-260.