Project 2 Bibliography
1. Johnson, Gregory. “Google Translate Http://Translate.google.com/.” Technical Services Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 2, 2012, pp. 165–165
In this peer-reviewed journal offers a review from the Google serviced Google Translate. A variety of other translating services are brought up for comparison sake and explained as perhaps equally as useful but Google Translate being more feature rich in translation options and ease of access. Google Translate is capable of accessing Googles “family of Web and cloud applications” in order to translate a plethora of text from a variety of languages into the specified language; in the reviewer’s case this is English. The translator offers phonetic spelling and can speak the word aloud for the user. The accuracy of it was said, by the reviewer, to be trustable. This review is important to the research topic because it gives credibility to Google Translate as an optional text that can trusted and therefore used by study-abroad students who are in need of assistance to understand a language that’s foreign to them.
2. Lokkesmoe, Karen J, et al. “Developing Cross-Cultural Awareness through Foreign Immersion Programs.” European Journal of Training and Development, vol. 40, no. 3, 4 Apr. 2016, pp. 155–170
The article details the findings of a study of 40 students from research universities found in the US and Brazil. Each student participated in a one semester long course of study-abroad in a respective country. Students intercultural awareness were tested pre the students experience abroad as well as post. Personal assessments as well as a method of inventory done by the Intercultural Development Inventory were completed by the students. The data was compared and found that there was no significant evidence that suggested there were any marginal developments in intercultural awareness amongst the students. These findings are extremely important in assessing any claims that give credence to the idea that there are personal effects in terms of cultural growth when partaking in study abroad programs. This gives objective evidence that could falsify claims that there is intercultural development to be gained. This could possibly conflict with study-abroad student’s ability to pick up on shifts in Spanish speaking dialect.
3. Groves, Michael, and Klaus Mundt. “Friend or Foe? Google Translate in Language for Academic Purposes.” English for Specific Purposes, vol. 37, 2015, pp. 112–121
To understand the accuracy of machine translation a study was set up where students submitted essays that were translated to English by a web-based translation engine. The results found that there were quite a few grammatical errors after the English translation since the translator was unable to decipher correctly sentence structure, certain choices of words, and sometimes the translator simply was missing a word from the translation. These problems were said to “significantly affect reader comprehension.” On the other hand, spelling errors were a problem and pronoun, preposition, and article use weren’t problematic for the translator. The study noted that, since languages don’t always have direct translations, syntactical gaps were problematic for the translator’s ability to produce an error free translation. Additionally, the translator showed different levels of error between languages where certain languages, in this case Chinese and Malay, were less error prone than others to the translator. This makes online translators an unreliable source.
4. Wade, Ryckie G. “Try Google Translate to Overcome Language Barriers.” BMJ: British Medical Journal, vol. 343, no. 7832, 2011, pp. 1049–1049
The article found in this journal publication gives a quick review of Google Translates services. The review pointed out that there are 66 languages encoded into the translator of which all can automatically be detected if the user doesn’t know the original language that needs translation. According to the article, informal testing was used among multilingual staff from the publication as well as non-English speaking patients of which yielded accurate results. It is recommended that doctors make use of the service since it allows customization of what’s being translated and provides a quick, easy alternative to having a non-digital translator. This conflicts with the previous source which stated that the translation service was not accurate; however, the tests mentioned in this article were admittedly informal and therefore the conclusion should not be taken as fact. But this article lends to the idea that Google Translate could be an effective service to translate languages for students.
5. Cubillos, Jorge H.1 and Thomas1 Ilvento. "The Impact of Study Abroad on Students' Self-Efficacy Perceptions." Foreign Language Annals, vol. 45, no. 4, Dec. 2012, pp. 494-511
Students who went abroad were tested before and after their trip in an assessment of their self-efficacy in certain generalized skills such as oral and reading skills. What was found was that across the board the net gains post having studied abroad were markedly higher with the greatest increases in self-efficacy on oral skills. It was noted that long-term study abroad programs will yield the greatest effects but that’s not to dismiss short-term programs which still had considerably better results for student’s self-efficacy when compared to the student’s original assessments due to interactions with foreign communities. As expected this relates closely with what other researchers have found in regards to mental states of study abroad students who tend to test better in efficacy levels. What is to be noted is that study-abroad programs are building confidence among the average student in a quantifiable way. This could translate to the idea that students would be more confident in learning languages.
6. Balk, Ethan M, et al. “Data Extraction from Machine-Translated versus Original Language Randomized Trial Reports: A Comparative Study.” Systematic Reviews, vol. 2, no. 1, 2013
The accuracy of online translation services comes into question when translating between two or more languages. To test the accuracy Google Translate was used across five different languages; Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. All of these languages were then translated to English. The results showed that Spanish, of which will be focused on had the highest number of correct extractions more than half the time at 93%. The conclusion was that Google Translate was easy to use, a benefit, but there remained a trade-off between that ease and the risk of error due to incorrect translations. Like other sources that formally studied the accuracy and therefore value of Google Translate, or just translation services in general, the service was accurate enough to be considered viable and useful but many errors were still present that could complicate the ability for a foreign reader to understand the translation and furthermore could confuse the user to adopt improper ways of speaking/writing a language.
7. Aiken, Milam, et al. "An Evaluation of the Accuracy of Online Translation Systems." Communications of the IIMA, vol. 9, no. 4, 2009, pp. 67-84 ABI/INFORM Collection; SciTech Premium Collection
To study the accuracy of Web based translation services common phrases, of which were both written in German and Spanish, were translated to English from their respective language using Google Translate as well as three other online translation services. Of all the services Google Translate was found to be the most accurate. It was concluded that, despite there being errors with grammar in translation, that Google Translate was also the most easily understood, the meaning could still reasonably be figured out. This result contributes that the text, Google Translate, is the most reliable source to be used for translation amongst study-abroad students and will allow for survival in a foreign country. This source returned the same conclusion that other sources did which focused on Google Translates accuracy; it is a trustworthy assistant to translation. This study was different, however, because it assessed ability to extract meaning from the translation even if it was not entirely correct.
8. Young, Scott H. “How I'm Learning Spanish.” Scott Young, Oct. 2013
This blog post offers a first-hand experience with learning Spanish and gives an overview of the challenges of it as well as simply just discussing what the experience of being it’s like to speak almost exclusively Spanish in an attempt to learn it. The blogger states that sticking to a rule of speaking exclusively Spanish, except under certain circumstances (such as talking to his parents) has been the most beneficial way to acclimate to the language and learn its nuances. What wasn’t useful was language learning software. This could be in conflict with the idea that Google Translate is a useful text since it could hold students back from learning a language. Google Translate does not claim to be a learning tool but it would allow students to be lazy which would be problematic considering the bloggers claimed best method of learning Spanish. This source is interesting because of its offering of this method; it’s not a method that seems to be popular or often made use of yet it seems to be very successful.
9. Dillon, Cailey. “Valencia: Culturally Speaking.” ISA Student Blog, 11 Dec. 2016
This blog, of which is more akin to a travel brochure, gives name of the students favorite places found within Valencia, Spain. Many of which are tourist destinations or as, the student interprets them, a kind of cultural icon of Valencia, Spain which expresses core values of its culture. The blog post is an important way to incorporate travel abroad students understanding of the culture found within Valencia into the topic of research. It additionally gives insight into focal points of the city which would help analyze how study abroad students acclimate to an entirely different culture that they are likely very much unaccustomed to. This is quite different from virtually all of the other sources since it works more as a guide to places of travel within Valencia, Spain. But it contributes the value of identifying places that are potentially more tourist attractions which would help a student acclimate to the Spanish language since these places would harbor both English and Spanish speakers.
10. Bell, Guy Alexander. “Eight Really Cool Things to Do and See in Valencia.” Spain-Holiday, 26 July 2013
Like the preceding source this is a sort of travel guide to Valencia, Spain. It highlights major areas of tourism and gives a description of them based off of personal experience with having occupied the city. Very much like the previous source this allows for further understanding into the topic of research by demonstrating how foreign tourists become accustomed to life in other countries by visiting cultural hubs within the city. It outlines what are considered the top tier offerings of the city which would clearly reflect the city’s cultural values and icons. This article is similar to the source previously provided since it fits the same genre and shares the same goal of providing information about cultural hotspots. Similarly, like the last one it too identifies areas that would be helpful to a study-abroad student since many of these places would be areas with larger numbers of English speakers too which would help ease students into a language.