Measuring the Impact of Online Translation on FL Writing Scores

Abstract

Online translation (OT) sites, which automatically convert text from one language to another, have been around for nearly 20 years. While foreign language students and teachers have long been aware of their existence, and debates about the accuracy and usefulness of OT are well known, surprisingly little research has been done to analyze the actual effects of online translator usage on student writing. The current study compares the scores of two composition tasks by third- and fourth-semester university students of French who used an online translator, with or without prior training, to the scores of students who did not use OT. Students using an online translator did not perform significantly worse those not using the translator on either task. In fact, students who received prior training in OT outscored the control group overall on the second writing task. Additionally, students using the online translator received higher subscores on one or both writing tasks for features such as comprehensibility, spelling, content, and grammar. The results of the current study are discussed in detail; implications for the foreign language classroom are presented; and avenues for future research are proposed.

An investigation of machine translation output quality and the influencing factors of source texts

“…In addition, while the language proficiency was consistent within a student's English text, the MT outputs sometimes contained inconsistencies. Particularly, as expressed by O'Neill (2014O'Neill ( , 2016, mismatches between the vocabulary and grammar levels, such as more advanced words in ill-formed sentences were found, which implied that the grammatical accuracy of MT is lower than its lexical accuracy. Ducar and Schocket (2018) argued that such irregularities in the students' L2 texts can be a telltale sign of the students' use of MT.…”

“…Previous studies have conducted preliminary research and presented tentative conclusions about the effectiveness of using MT in that, despite its inaccuracies, it remains useful for FL education (Briggs, 2018;Garcia, 2016;O'Neill, 2016;Sun, 2017). However, the quality of MT outputs has been rarely investigated in FL education; the majority of studies examined MT accuracy based on users' perceptions, and only a few empirical studies have been conducted that directly assess the accuracy of MT (Lee, 2020).…”

Effects of using machine translation to mediate the revision process of Korean university students’ academic writing

“…From the L2 writing perspective, MT can support students' efforts to autonomously analyze and revise their written work (Baraniello et al, 2016). Studies have confirmed that using MT during the L2 writing process helps students to enhance the overall quality of their writing (Kol, Schcolnik & Spector-Cohen, 2018;O'Neill, 2016;Stapleton & Kin, 2019), focus more on content (Kim, 2011;O'Neill, 2016), and produce more lexically accurate and complex texts (Fredholm, 2019) with fewer orthographic errors (O'Brien, Simard & Goulet, 2018;Shadiev, Sun & Huang, 2019). Even in the relative infancy of MT technology, its outputs were found to benefit beginner writers in terms of improving the quality, quantity, and fluency of L2 writing (Garcia & Peña, 2011).…”

The Effect of L2 Proficiency on Post-editing Machine Translated Texts

“…In fact, educational activities such as analyzing mistranslations, preediting, and post-editing were found to help develop meta-linguistic awareness by directing students' attention to the differences and similarities between their native language and their L2 (Abraham, 2009;Correa, 2014;Enkin & Mejías-Bikandi, 2016;Niño, 2009;Somers, 2003). O'Neill (2012O'Neill ( , 2016 found that such activities and training in the use of MT enable learners to write more accurately and receive higher subscores on L2 writing tasks (comprehensibility, spelling, content, and grammar) than those who did not. In addition to linguistic advantages, using MT as a supplementary tool has also been found to help lower student anxiety and increase confidence in language learning (Bahri & Mahadi, 2016;Jin, 2013;Niño, 2009).…”