BENEFIT OF USING GOOGLE TRANSLATE IN TRANSLATING

TEXT FROM STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVE

Elsa Tiara Siregar

e-mail : [email protected]

English Education Department of Tarbiyah and Teachers Training, State Islamic

University of North Sumatera Medan, Medan, 207131, Indonesia

ABSTRACT
English as an international language is important to be learned in Indonesia. English has
four elements, namely reading, listening, writing, and speaking. In Indonesia, English is
as a foreign language which is learned in school (elementary school, junior school, and
senior high school). As a foreign language, the students still have many lack of learning it.
One of the reasons of it is because they are lack in vocabulary. Many students still need a
tool of translation to help them in translation text, namely dictionary. In this modern era,
dictionary has available in mobile phone. The students can access the dictionary from
their mobile phone. One of the famous online dictionaries is Google Translate. Many
students use Google Translate to translate text in Bahasa Indonesia into English or in
English into Bahasa Indonesia. In this study, the researcher using qualitative research with
questionnaire and interview. The sample of this study is forty three of students at eleventh
grade of MAS PAB 1 Sampali. They are 17 male and 26 female. They are 35 student
(81%) using Google Translate and 8 (19%) students who do not using Google Translate.
The benefit of using Google Translate according to the students are that the students no
longer need to bring a dictionary to the school, they said that they are very lazy to bring
the dictionary to the school, because it can add to the burden on their bags, they do not
need to look up the meaning of one vocabulary one at a time, as is done when using a
dictionary

Keywords: Google Translate, Translate, Benefit.

1. INTRODUCTION
English is an international language used by many people around the world and it is very
important to be followed or studied in creative and innovative areas at this time. As an
international language, English has a very important role because English has many
functions, one of which is to unite nation throughout the world as a means of communication
between people. In various countries in the world, English is the first language and a foreign
language. In Indonesia, English is a foreign language that is studied by Indonesian people,
especially in formal schools, from elementary school to tertiary level. In learning English
there are four important elements that must be learned, by students, namely reading, listening,
writing, and speaking. The four elements are risk linking another. Although in elementary
school, junior school, and senior high school, there are no special subject in each of these
elements, but there are only English subject. In English subjects, all these elements are
learned at once. Because in Indonesia English is as a foreign language, therefore not a few
students who still have many shortcomings in learning it. One reason is because their lack of
mastering vocabulary. Because students do not master a lot of English vocabulary which
makes them difficult in the learning process, therefore many students use alternatives to help
them translate vocabulary that they do not know. In this now era, technology is very
sophisticated at all in any field, not least in the field of education. The internet as one of the
most riveting technologies makes many people find it easy to do many things, as experienced
by students in translating text from one language to another. Google Translate is one of the
famous translation engine and many students use Google Translate as a Bahasa Indonesia
into English and English into Bahasa Indonesia.
Translation is the process of transferring one language (source language) to another
language (target language). As explained by Munday (2004: 3), translation conquers two
senses, either translation as a product in which a translator must focus on the concrete product
of translation , or as a process on which translation studies centre on the role of a translator in
taking the source text (ST) and turning it into the target text in another different language
(TT). House, J. (2015: 2) states that translation can be defined as the result of a linguistic-
textual operation in which a text in one language is re-contextualized in another language. As
a linguistic-textual operation, translation is, however, subject to, and substantially influenced
by, a variety of extra-linguistic factors and condition. So, in translating a text, students need
translation tools that can help them to translate it, namely Google Translate. Google translate
is a translator engine that is easy to use with a mobile phone.
 Because Google Translate is already very famous among students and teachers, there
have been many studies conducted to examine about Google Translate itself, as has been
done Dyah Raina Purwaningsih about Comparing Translation Produced by Google
Translation Tool to Translation Produced by Translator, next Xuewei Chen, Sandra Acosta,
and Adam Etheridge Baryy also has done a research about Evaluating the Accuracy of
Google Translate for Diabetes Education Material, and then there is a research about
Investigating the Use of Google Translate in “Terms and Conditions” in an Airline’s Official
Website: Errors and Implication by Tya Vidhayasai, Sonthida Keyuravong.
From the many studies that have been carried out by many researchers on the translation
engine that is Google Translate. There is no researcher has examined the Benefit of Using
Google Translate in Translating Text in Elf Class from Students’ Perspective. Therefore, the
researcher will conduct research on this matter. Because surely Google Translate has benefits
so it is used by many people especially by students.
The researcher will conduct research on how the benefits of Google Translate itself to
students in translating texts, both English into Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Indonesia into
English. So, the researcher will examine in the perspective of the students themselves the
benefit provide by Google Translate to its users namely students in the process of translating
texts.
This research was conducted to add insight and knowledge about the translation machine
namely Google Translate which is widely used by many people in the general public,
especially among students and teachers so that they it can find out the use of Google
Translate itself in helping the process of learning English by students in the schools, so the
students can use Google Translate for the purpose of translating text.

1. LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1.Translation
1.1.1. Definition of Translation
There are many definition of the translation from many experts. The following
are some definition of translation from the experts, Crystal (1987:334) states that the
term ‘translation’ is the neutral term used for all tasks where the meaning of an
expression in on language (source language) is turned into the meaning of (target
language), whether the medium is spoken, written, or signed.
 Catford (1965) cited in Suryawinata and Hariyanto (2003:11), defined
translation as a replacement of textual material in the source language by equivalent
textual material in the target language.
According to Nida and Taber (1969: 12), translation is an effort in recreating
meaning from the source language (SL) into the target language (TL) by using natural
equivalent, first in term of meaning and second in term of style. Furthermore, bell
(1991: 4) has the same opinion, which emphasized meaning and style in translation
definition. He defined translation as the expression in the target language which has
been expressed in the source language, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalent.
According to Newmark (1998), human translation occurs at two levels:
semantic equivalent and communicative equivalence.
Additionally, Tytler (1797) introduces three laws of translation which state
that the translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work
that the style and manner of writing should be of the same character with that of
original composition. However, despite the fact that many novel theories were
proposed by translation scholar, the concept has always emerged out of the two
traditional approaches of “”word vs. sense” or “literal vs. free” translation (Newmark,
1998)
From the definition of some experts above, the researcher can conclude that
the translation is process of changing the meaning of one language (source language)
into another language (target language).

1.2.Google Translate
Google Translate is a service site provided by Google Translate Inc. which is intended
to translate section of text or web pages in one language into another. The site, launched
in 2007, contains more than 50 languages spoken in several countries around the world.
(AnneAhira.com, can be found at: http://www.anneahira.com/google-translate.htm)

2. METHOD
The researcher used descriptive qualitative research in this study. The researcher used
qualitative descriptive research was because the researcher did not use a number in this
research, but describe it in a sentences. The participants of this research are students in
eleventh grade at MAS PAB 1Sampali which is consist of forty three students. They are 17
male and 26 female. The researcher used questionnaire and interview for collecting the data.
The questionnaire consists of ten questions and the interview only done by five students. The
interview has done by using WhatsApp. The questionnaire and the interview were applied to
conduct the data of the benefit of Google Translate in translating text based on their
perceptions.

3. FINDING & DISCUSSION

The objective of this study is to describe the use of Google Translate obtained from the
results of the questionnaire to forty three students and the benefits that have been given by
Google Translate to students obtained from interviews with several students. The results of
this study are categorized into two; first, the use of Google Translate by the students and the
benefit of using Google Translate from students’ perspective:

1. The Use of Google Translate by the students:

The Use of Google Translate

19%
The Students Who Using Google
Translate
The Students Who Do Not Using
GoogleTranslate

81%

Figure 1: The Students Who Use of Google Translate

From the many existing translation machines, Google Translation is one of the translation
machine that are has very familiar to many people, especially among students, namely
education. Google Translate has been widely used because it can be accessed on each
student’s mobile phone.
Based on figure 1 obtained from the questionnaire that was given to the studentts, that
there were 35 students (81%) who used Google Translate in translating text and not using
Google Translate in translating text as many as 8 (18%) students. So, based on these results it
can be seen that many students at eleventh grade of MAS PAB 1Samplai use Google
Translate in translating text.

2. The Benefit of Using Google Translate from Students’ Perspective

Technology has a very important role in human life in any field. Google Translate is
as one of the technological advancement used by many students because it has benefit to its
users.
From the result of interviews conducted to several students it can be explained that
Google Translate has many benefits in translating texts. According to the student, Google
Translate has a great benefit in their English learning process, namely in translating texts. The
benefit provided by Google Translate is that the students no longer need to bring a dictionary
to the school. They said that they are very lazy to bring the dictionary to the school, because
it can add to the burden on their bags. Then they said that the benefit provided by Google
Translate is that they do not need to look up the meaning of one vocabulary one at a time, as
is done when using a dictionary. Even in Google Translate can translate dozens of word and
the grammar is correct, unlike the dictionary that can only search for the meaning of a word
and the students often have difficulty in combining the words. And also the Google Translate
does not require a lot of internet quota in the work process.

4. CONCLUSION
English as an international language used by many people around the world and it is very
important to be followed or studied in creative and innovative areas at this time, like in
Indonesia English as a foreign language is learned by the students. But, many students still
lack of in learning English well, one of the reason is because their lack of vocabulary.
Because their lack of it, the students need tool of translation to translate the text. In this
modern era, there are so many technologies to make many people easier to do something,
such as translating a text for the students. Google Translate as an online dictionary is one of
famous translation engine that students using. They using it because it is make them easier to
translate the text that they do not, in English into Bahasa Indonesia or Bahasa Indonesia into
English. They are using Google Translate because the Google Translate has a many benefit to
them.
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