Google translate: an experience with students of technical English at university

Abstract

In the current worldwide context, it has become imperative the need to develop new and specific skills for the effective management of the English language, as well as the technological tools that the Internet offers. In the field of teaching English for Specific Purposes, automatic translators available on the Internet constitute new resources that allow for the dynamization of the traditional translation processes. In this context, an experience was conducted with students from cohort 2011 who attended the subject named “Technical English”, which is taught face to face in all the engineering careers at Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Económico Sociales (FICES) of the Universidad Nacional de San Luis (UNSL). The purpose of this paper is to describe the experience in which the students used Google Automatic Translator (GAT) to translate, analyze and edit texts produced by such resource applying the knowledge acquired during the development of the subject. The conclusions reveal the pedagogical implications of using this technological tool in classes of English for Specific Purposes

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