VIETNAMESE ENGINEERING STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF THE USE OF GOOGLE TRANSLATION TOOL

Abstract

The study looked at how Google Translate was used among a group of engineering students to learn TOEIC at a university in Southern Vietnam. This research took a form of a qualitative case study with semi-structured interviews and observations being the data collection tools. Findings suggested that this translation tool, in essence, was perceived to offer certain benefits to the students.  For example, it was fast, convenient and helped students catch the gist or the general meaning of the source language quickly. Google Translate, however, failed to support reliable and understandable translation if the source texts contained technical terms, complex words, uncommon texts and meanings which perplexed the students. These limitations of this machine translation tool should be fully aware by engineering students and general language users who are not intermediate or advanced learners of English if it is to be used in translating tasks in the future. Suggestions on how to improve the limitations of Google Translate are mentioned in this study.