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USING TECHNOLOGY IN ENGLISH CLASS; GOOGLE TRANSLATE
Jumabayeva Adolat Sabirovna
Teacher at Urgench State University.
Foreign Philology Faculty Department Interfaculty foreign languages
Annotation:
The new era of technology now offers instant translation to and
from various languages. Technology has significantly altered the way we live and
has created more opportunities for autonomous language learning. This paper
focuses on one of these technologies, Google Translate is an instant translation tool
that can be accessed via a web browser or a software application, which can
translate words, phrases and full texts from one language to another.
Key words:
Google translate, translation, vocabulary, phrases, learning
English
Teaching English as a foreign language is a difficult and challenging job to do
since the ability of learners in receiving the lesson may differ from one to another.
A teacher is required to be creative and innovative in designing the syllabus and
activity to be conducted in class. One of the ways to teach English is by using Google
Translate. As everyone knows that google translate is a tool provided by Google Inc.
that enables the user to get the meaning of the source language into the target
language. Google Translate is a free machine translation service made available by
the Google Company for translating texts and messages from one language into
another. Currently it is accessible through a web interface along with smart phone
apps and application programming interfaces that can fit into new software. Google
Translate supports more than 100 languages as well as it is based on Statistical
Machine Translation, which works by analyzing hundreds of millions of natural
bilingual text pairs These natural pairs can serve as authentic examples of language
use from the languages involved.
Since the birth of Grammar-Translation Method in the mid nineteenth century
researchers have long investigated the use of translation as a methodology for
learning language skills such as reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary. The
advent of new electronic tools and technologies has profoundly transformed earlier
methodologies, providing both language learners and teachers with new avenues to
explore in the field of language learning. Some scholars believe that due to the needs
and realities of the current globalized world there is a revival of translation
approaches to language learning and teaching. [1] Within the last few years, one
technology that has amply helped learners to develop their language learning skills
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is Google Translate. Indeed, millions of people around the world use the service for
translation on a daily basis and a growing number of language learners are using it
for language learning purposes. However, the advantages and potentials of this new
technology for language learning have recently been explored by few researchers [3]
In a study of the writings of a group of beginner learners with low language
proficiency Garcia & Pena (2011) found that these learners could benefit from using
machine translation more than the high proficiency learners and there was evidence
that they preferred to use it even against the will of their instructors. Interestingly,
they discovered that using machine translation also helps beginner learners to better
communicate among themselves. Josefsson (2011) concluded that as a supporting
tool on students mobile phones, Google Translate performed better than the
traditional dictionaries with its higher speed and accuracy particularly for translation
of collocations, phrases, and technical words. Another research by Jin & Deifell
(2013) showed that as an online dictionary, Google Translate was the second most
widely used online tool by language learners because of its convenience and
concluded that learners generally used Google Translate as a supplementary tool to
online dictionaries due to its lack of grammatical explanation. According to the
findings of some researchers “learners believe the use of online tools such as Google
Translate accelerates their reading and writing skills in the foreign language while
reducing their learning anxiety’. However, the other researchers face to the new
findings with caution as online dictionaries fail to provide the students with clear
explanations and generally ignore the contexts.
GT is as a translator abounds in the literature is a helpful tool, particularly
because it is easily accessible and free. Although some recognize that GT provides
intelligible and acceptable translations, others caution against its use because its
output is not often accurate Another important factor to consider when using GT as
a translator is the input and output language selection. Some languages, such as
English, are far more developed on GT than lesser-known languages. Therefore, the
accuracy and intelligibility of the output may vary from language to language.
GT is one of the effective for vocabulary learning and the improvement of
writing and reading. Students could benefit from GT in a self-directed learning
environment if they were equipped with the appropriate knowledge to use it
effectively. Building on this idea, using GT in classroom activities could encourage
learners to study independently and allow them to create their own strategies to work
out language learning problems.
Being an important member of the “Google family”, Google Translate is
probably one of the easiest and most accessible tools to help users meet their
translation needs. Since it offers quick an rather accurate dual translation services in
a variety of languages, students have discovered the benefits of this application and
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tend to use it more often both inside and outside the classroom. The reader may have
used Google Translate and may wonder how it actually works. For the sake of a
linguistic experiment, the abstract to this paper was almost fully translated from the
author’s mother tongue (i. e. Uzbek) into English and now appears only with some
minor stylistic adjustment. So how did and does this translation software actually do
it? In a rather playful mode, the official YouTube Google video shows an image of
bilingual elves working for them, but what actually does the job is the statistical
machine translation. The translation itself is based on various patterns which are
found in a large number of texts. The Google Translate creators are aware of all the
challenges involved in proper translations, especially in cases of exceptions, and the
exceptions to those exceptions. Thus, Google has decided to analyze a vast number
of documents already translated by humans. These documents come from a variety
of sources that include different books, etc. One of the underlying principles is that
Google computers are set to scan for statistically significant patterns. Thus, once
such chunks have been discovered, such methodology can be applied to similar texts
in the future. Google Translate developers admit that some languages have fewer
available chunks and that is why their software did not discover many of them. Also,
the translation will often depend on a particular language or a language pair.
Moreover, Google Translate has some undeniable advantages: it is free, instant; it
offers a variety of languages for input and output; it allows voice recognition,
translation of entire web pages, and an upload of entire files for instant translation.
Foreign language teachers may wonder what the abovementioned results
might imply for their own teaching. If vocabulary development seems to be the same
regardless of pupils’ using GT or printed dictionaries, shall pupils be left to choose
for themselves? Prohibiting pupils from using GT is probably fruitless, and more is
gained by showing pupils different ways of using it and discussing together why
different translations are more or less trustworthy or more or less faulty. This way of
dealing with GT in the foreign language classroom setting does not take for granted
that its use will enhance pupils’ language learning, but views GT, rather, as one of
several tools that are available to learners, and that they will benefit from knowing
in a less superficial way.
GT can be a useful tool to make language learners write, especially less
proficient learners who otherwise would not write as much or, perhaps, not at all; it
is important, though, that language teachers stress that it is improbable that GT in
itself will improve pupils’ vocabulary learning.
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