Teaching students to use machine translation

Should online translators be banned in schools?

Translation tools can stretch writing to a higher level, introduce new vocabulary, help students explore cultural nuances and they are free, easy to use and widly available on all the tablets in our school. Why would we not want to teach our students how to use them? I don't think that it would even be possible to ban them in the school setting nor do I think that it is nesessary. Machine translation can help language students grow. We should be teaching students how to accurately check their output and how to utilise translations tools to improve their grammar and depth of vocabulary.

Making the most of online translation tools

If I set a written piece of work it is a given that students will use machine translation. The quality of machine translations has improved dramatically in the last two years, it is very clear when machine translation has been used because the level far exceeds the quality of work that students can usually output. 

How can we teach students to interrogate the results of machine translation?

Japanese sentence structure is SOV subject object verb

English sentence stucture is SVO subject verb object

In earlier online translation tools word order created problems when translating from Japanese into English and vice-versa. I used to have an activity for students to see the errors in machine translation by asking them to create sentences that return the incorrect word order. This was an easy activity with amusing yoda-esque results  彼に私はリンゴをくれたwould become he me an apple gave.

Recently, the development of large language models LLMs means that machine translation can look at wider context and even handle idioms. Those old mistranslation examples are now being handled with ease. As we feed more material into the systems the algorithms only continue to improve.

Why are online translation tools good for language learning?

It is our job as teachers to then ensure that the student understands what they have written. We need to teach students how to evaluate translation accurately.

1. Ask questions about word choice

Ask students questions about their choice of words. Ask students about synonmys that they already know. 

2. Rephrase sentences

Ask students to rephrase sentences that seem too formal or technical. How would your word choice change if you were writing this piece of work for a young child? Your friend? Your boss? Publication in a magazine?

3. Reverse Translation

Get students to reverse translate back into the original language to check if there are changes and differences from the original text. By this I mean, write a passage in Japanese, use machine translation to change it ito English then copy and paste the English translation into the translation tool and switch it back to Japanese. Discuss why any changes may have arisen. Pay attention to word order and tone.

4. Compare translation tools

Online translators use different algorithms and data sets. Have students compare a translation of the same original text in Deepl and Google translate. Are there differences, do they understand why? Which translation is best for the piece of work that they are writing? Where possible have a native speaker also check the translation for nuance and odd turns of phrases.

5. Understand the etymology

If the written piece includes idioms ask the students to research the history of that idiom and explain its meaning to a partner. Can they find an obscure idiom that the translator doesn't recognise?

Where is machine translation weak?

• Social media posts and comments do not fare well when being machine translated. The posts are casual and often rely on context clues from an attached picture. If the subject of a sentence is dropped it makes machine translation difficult.  
• Local dialects and modern slang can also be mistranslated. 
• Japanese has many more onomatopoeia words in comparison to English. For example もやもや a feeling of something being unresolved, foggy or unclear. 
• Technical terms and terminology can be difficult to translate. In Japanese there are more words related to fish and their sizes. For example in English a yellowtail may be described as big/small young/mature but in Japanese more stages in the lifecycle have specfic names モジャコ, ワカシ, イナダ, ハマチ, ワラサ and ブリ.

Challenge students find some words that the translation tool cannot accurately translate.

I do have a current lesson for teaching machine translation, I feel that it may become outdated quickly.

By using these techniques to critically evaluate and interograte the quality of translations produced by online translation tools students learn that these tools are not the final step. Translation tools can help expose students to a greater depth of vocabulary and help them explore the nuances of phrases. I only have concerns about the use of online translators when the students are blindly copying text without understanding it themselves. A short conversation about their writing and employing the tools in this post can soon identify if this is the case.

Do you allow translators in your classroom?

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