On the uses of machine translation for education purposes: Attitudes and perceptions of Lithuanian teachers

Abstract

Technology in the context of education is a subject of debate, from a very positive experience that promotes learning to a very negative one that prohibits the use of various smart devices, tools, programmes, and platforms in the classroom. The problem is how to find a balance between the two positions and how to encourage teachers to introduce possibilities of technologies to benefit the general education process. The topic of machine translation in educational contexts has gained the attention of the research community only recently. Previous studies not only point to the benefits that the technology may bring to the classroom, especially in foreign language learning, but also report mixed views of educators. This study, which is based on the findings from a survey of Lithuanian secondary school teachers, seeks to explore the current status of the inclusion of machine translation in the educational process from teachers’ perspective to envisage the teacher’s role as a facilitator or a mediator in developing children’s machine translation literacy. The conclusions that can be drawn imply that machine translation is rarely considered to be a useful technology by teachers, and its benefits are either unknown or underestimated. Therefore, the need for machine translation literacy instruction emerges.