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

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.

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.