Abstract
ABSTRACTMachine translation, specifically Google Translate, is freely available, and is improving in its ability to provide grammatically accurate translations. This development has the potential to provoke a major transformation in the internationalization process at universities, since students may be, in the future, able to use technology to circumvent traditional language learning processes. While this is a potentially empowering move that may facilitate academic exchange and the diversification of the learner and researcher community, it is also a potentially problematic issue in two main respects. Firstly, the technology is at present unable to align to the sociolinguistic aspects of university-level writing and may be misunderstood as a remedy to lack of writer language proficiency. Secondly, it introduces a new dimension to the production of academic work that may clash with Higher Education policy and, thus, requires legislation, in particular in light of issues such as plagiarism and academic misconduct. This paper considers these issues against the background of English as a Global Lingua Franca, and argues two points. First of these is that Higher Education Institutions need to develop an understanding and code of practice for the use of this technology. Secondly, potential future research will be presented.
Highlights
Machine translation, Google Translate is freely available on a number of devices, and is improving in its ability to provide grammatically accurate translations
Just as free access to vast amounts of hypertext has transformed the process of higher education, it would not be unreasonable to expect that Google Translate (GT) and the like will affect normative educational practices for vast numbers of students who are not studying in their first language, or whose studies lead them to interact with users of other languages
Just as the opening of the web led to a reconceptualisation of plagiarism (Chandrasoma, Thompson, and Pennycook 2004 inter alia), and a redefinition of what is acceptable and what is not, this paper will make the case that similar debates need to take place about what roles Machine Translation, and GT
Summary
According to Flowerdew and Li (2007), the nature of plagiarism is one that is very much rooted in Anglo culture and its specific notions of ownership of writing and knowledge. Moore Howard (2007) demonstrates how this concept of ownership developed through the 19th century and still informs thinking to this day, despite the protestations of Postmodernists and Poststructuralists who strive to distance the text from the author in order to focus on the meaning created in the reader. Before considering these, we would like to examine the wider context of English in a globalised world, and within an internationalised university This debate will point to Google Translate as potential facilitator of communication, but it will highlight a number of controversial points that will lead back to considerations of the use of this technology in the light of potential academic offense. As Kirkpatrick (2012) points out, English is the sole working language of ASEAN (The Association of Southeast Asian Nations), and yet for most of the countries in the association, there is little direct connection to English, in the manner of the inner or outer circle countries This leads to a situation where both parties in a conversation are communicating in a language which is not their own. There are, clear inconsistencies with this position, to which this paper will turn
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