Chinese speakers’ use of machine translation as an aid for scholarly writing in English: a review of the literature and a report on a pilot workshop on machine translation literacy
Lynne Bowker
Abstract
ABSTRACT With the introduction of free online machine translation tools, and particularly following the integration of artificial neural networks into this technology, there has been a growing interest in exploring the potential of machine translation as an aid for writing in another language. This article synthesizes the literature that focuses specifically on the use of machine translation by Chinese speakers who seek to write in English in a scholarly context. This article also reports on a pilot study carried out with international students from China at a Canadian university. The students participated in a machine translation literacy workshop where they learned tips to use this technology more effectively to help them with writing in English. Overall, the workshop was a success with students reporting increased knowledge about and confidence in using machine translation; however, they also suggested that future iterations of the workshop could be improved by adding more language-pair specific tips for translation-friendly writing, as well as more information on post-editing the Chinese-English language pair.