Perception of Online Machine Translators by Non-Native Students of English Philology and Future Teachers of English

Abstract

"For centuries, print dictionaries were the primary assisting tool for those who needed to find the meaning of an unknown word or translate something from or to a target language. These days, various technological solutions are available, many of them online and free of charge. Online machine translators (OMTs) are used as dictionaries to look up individual words or translate texts of various lengths. OMTs have changed the situation in foreign language education, too. The paper aims to discover how OMTs are perceived and used by non-native speaking university students of English in teacher-training and philology programmes and identify possible differences. First, the paper summarizes the main directions in the ever-growing research on perceiving OMTs in foreign language education. Second, it presents partial results of the online survey conducted among future teachers of English and students of English philology (English language and culture). The results proved that both groups of respondents use a wide range of OMTs, with Google Translate being the most popular. In general, respondents showed positive attitudes towards OMTs and were satisfied with their outcomes; however, teacher trainees were more critical when the quality of translations was considered and they were more aware of the need for post-editing. Future teachers of English also showed more reserve for using OMTs as means of FL learning (learning new vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, reading, writing, translating). Only a tiny part of respondents (all future teachers) saw OMTs as a threat to effective foreign language learning. The results proved a more “conservative” perception of OMTs by future teachers of English (which may explain why some practising teachers ban using OMTs in their classrooms, fearing that their students could become dependent on them). Students of English philology (English language and culture) manifested less critical attitudes towards OMT in all observed categories. They focused more on speed and comfort than the quality of translation. This result points to the need to instruct students on using OMTs properly (including post-editing) to get the best possible translating and learning outcomes. The paper presents partial results of the research project KEGA 019TTU-04/2021 Integrating new digital tools into philological research and education sponsored by the Slovak Ministry of Education, Science, Research, and Sport."