Chapter

Using Google Translate Effectively

and Efficiently in Translating
Vietnamese Texts into English Ones
Hanh Truong

Abstract

With the boom and fast development of AI, using machine translation in transla-
tion teaching and learning has been a hot issue that appeals to much attention. Google
Translate, one of the most popular machine translation tools, is widely used in trans-
lation process in Vietnam university context for different reasons. At Van Lang Uni-
versity, where students majoring in Translation and Interpreting are discouraged to
use Google Translate, they still resort to it. However, it seemed that this application
did not create a high-quality product when the source language is Vietnamese. There-
fore, the author tried instructing the students using Google Translate tool at the
second stage after the stage of human intervention so that they can do their translation
tasks effectively and efficiently. This article reports the findings from the research
done with students majoring in Translation and Interpreting. It initially provides
different views of difficulties in dealing with Vietnamese texts and the limitations of
Google Translate in providing an English translation version. Then, it proceeds with
describing the setting of the present investigation. Based on qualitative research, the
information is collected and analyzed, and then, the findings are drawn. The article
concludes with modest suggestions and recommendations for using Google Translate
to teach translation.

Keywords: machine translation, Google translate, Vietnamese texts, english texts,

effective and efficient translation

1. Introduction

The Fourth Industrial Revolution with the advent of cyber physical systems has
opened up a wealth of opportunity for the translation industry. The application of
advances of technology and machine translation tools in unprofessional and profes-
sional translation to produce an enormous volume of translation texts in very short
time has proved the fact that using machine translation is inevitable. Translation
teaching and learning therefore is forced to makes changes involving instructing
learners on how to use machine translation tools effectively and efficiently to produce
high-quality translation versions.

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Translatology, Translation and Interpretation – Toward a New Scientific Endeavor

Google Translate (GT), one of the most popular machine translation tools with the
capability of translation of more than 100 languages in the world, is increasingly
widespread. In the context of higher education in Vietnam, GT is considered a dom-
inant translation tool in learning English for both English major students and English
nonmajor students. According to the research at Hanoi University of Industry in 2021
done by Nguyen et al. [1], 100 percent of English nonmajor students surveyed used
GT for learning E for Specific Purpose (ESP). The author of this study also found the
similar number of English major students using GT in their learning process despite
not having conducted an official survey.
English nonmajor students use GT mainly for reading and comprehending their
course books written in English or learning ESP, while English major students resort to
GT to deal with their courses in the specialism stage (in the university curriculum),
particularly translation assignments in their translation courses. Having observed
English major students’ using GT translating texts from Vietnamese into English and
vice versa, the author found that employing GT in the first step and human modifica-
tion in the final step in translating texts from Vietnamese into English seemed inef-
fective and inefficient, while the machine translation method still helped English-
Vietnamese translation to some extent. The reality put the author into a question that
what should be done to help the learners using GT effectively and efficiently and
improving their translating techniques translating texts from Vietnamese into English
instead of discouraging them from it.
The research, then, focuses on answering the two questions:

1. What difficulties may learners have when translating a text from Vietnamese to
English?

2. How can GT be used effectively and efficiently to produce high-quality

translation versions from Vietnamese to English?

2. Theoretical framework

2.1 Translation

Translation is a process of written communication between the writer and the

possible audience through the translator’s conveying meaning of a source language
into a target language considering the elements of lexicon, grammar, and context to
meet the requirement of naturalness of a target text.
According to Newmark [2], translation is “rendering the meaning of a text into
another language in a way that the author intended the text”. Translation is a proce-
dure with four levels: (1) the SL text level, the level of language; (2) the referential
level, the level of objects and events, real or imaginary; (3) the cohesive level; and
(4) the level of naturalness.
Holding a similar viewpoint to Newmark’s, Zafitri [3] thinks that translation is the
processing of replacing meanings in one language into another language through
interpretations. When a text is translated, the elements of lexicon, grammar, and
context in the source language should be considered and transferred into the target
and the meaning of the target language text should feature the naturalness of the
target language. Therefore, it is required that the equivalence between source

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.1003009

language and target language be met in order to prevent the audience from misun-
derstanding the target text.
Nida [4] defined translation as a process that can be viewed from different per-
spectives such as stylistics, authors intent, diversity of languages, differences of
corresponding cultures, problems of interpersonal communication, changes in literary
fashion, and distinct kinds of content and the circumstances in which translations are
to be used.
Tytler [5] also introduced three laws of translation: (1) the translation should give a
complete transcript of the ideas of the source language text; (2) the style of manner of
the target text should be of the same character with that of the original one; and (3)
the translation should have all the ease of the original text.

2.2 Machine translation and google translate

2.2.1 Machine translation

Alcina [6] defined machine translation (MT), also named as Automated Transla-
tion, as “a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer
software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another”.
It dated back 1933 when P.P. Telojamsky, a Russian scientist, proposed using
machine in translation. In 1954, the first MT system was born and successfully trans-
lated a Russian material into English. In 1976, MT technology was developed by
Canadian Bureau of Translation, using TAUM-METEO translation system to translate
weather report.
Translation versions using MT are automatically translated from one language to
one or more other languages, without human intervention in the translation process.
According to Lin et al. [7], MT has been an important research topic for several
decades in the field of artificial intelligence. More MT services have been provided by
companies, and custom domain names or professions have been available in transla-
tion software. This helps improve the quality of translation results. However, the
accuracy of documents has been far from the high requirement of qualities. Human
intervention is still an alternative way to improve the quality of translation products.

2.2.2 Google translate

Google Translate (GT) is a machine translation tool developed by Google. First

developed in 2007, using a system named SYSTRAN, and then using the principle of
Statistical Machine Translation in 2010 when being moved to a new platform of
machine translation, GT has improved the quality of translation texts over time as
more and more texts are loaded with diverse structures and contexts, creating a huge
source of corpus.
With the adoption of Neural Machine Translation technology for 110 language
pairs since 2016, GT has produced more accurate translation versions than other
machine translation applications. It has translated texts at a sentential level instead of
at a basic level, an independent substitution of words or phrasal level into broader
contexts, increasing levels of translation accuracy.
Recently, GT has become the most popular machine translation tool since it offers
both a website interface and mobile applications that users can use in their Android
and IOS operating cellphones to get texts translated from a source language to a target

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Translatology, Translation and Interpretation – Toward a New Scientific Endeavor

language. In addition, GT has supported more than 100 languages at different levels,
including Vietnamese. The application facilitates speech recognition, translating
entire webpages, and uploading entire text files to speed up translation. Also, since GT
is free for users to access; over 5 hundred million people all over the world use GT for
their translation purpose.

2.3 Relevant studies on using Google translate in translation

It cannot be denied that the application of GT in translation is increasingly popular

although the accuracy of translation products has still been in questioned by many
researchers. A lot of studies on using GT in translation and translation teaching and
learning as well as the accuracy levels of texts translated by GT have been done.
Nguyen et al. [1] conducted the study to assess the quality of a text translated from
English to Vietnamese using GT, compared with the human-translated translation
among students majoring Management Accounting in English in Hanoi University of
Industry. The research shows that Google Translate is the most successful in the word
level and the least useful in grammar because accuracy is often reduced in some
complex cases. Therefore, automatic translation is still not a substitute for translators
and still requires human intervention and correction.
Zafitri [3] also carried out his research on Mathematic students using GT in
learning English and concluded that Google Translate has a high effectiveness in the
process of translation despite its drawbacks.
Another research was done by Aslerasouli et al. [8] on undergraduate students of
English Translation translating texts in Physics and Politics using GT. The authors
compared both human translations and machine translations to investigate their
qualities. The findings indicated that there is a significant difference in the quality of
human translations and machine translations in favor of human translations and the
mode of translation affects its quality, but there is no statistically significant relation-
ship between translation errors and translation modes.
Also, the study was done by Anggaira [9] on high school students’ translations
from English to Indonesian to determine and then attempt to analyze the aspects of
language errors that appear on the machine translator from Google Translate. The
results indicate that GT translates word by word, but overlooks sentence context,
resulting in morphological, syntactic, and semantic errors. Therefore, human
improvements to the text of the translation are required to get translation accuracy.
The same results are found in the study conducted by Dwinanda [10] on the
effectiveness of using GT in translation. The research concludes that GT can be
successful if it translates at a basic level, word level, but GT fails to translate at a
sentential level. Therefore, Google Translate is only a pre-translation that still needs a
lot to be edited.
It can be noted that these previous researches used GT in the pre-translation stage
and human intervention in the postediting stage to better the quality of the translation
products although there were some differences in the participants (English major
students or English nonmajor students, high school students or undergraduates), the
language used in the source texts (the source text were written in English or in the
participants’ mother tongue), and the purposes of the studies.
The author of this article, on the other hand, wished to adopt GT in the post-
translation stage after analyzing and paraphrasing Vietnamese source texts in the pre-
translation stage to minimize morphological, semantic, and syntactic errors in the
target texts.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.1003009

2.4 Some characteristics of Vietnamese compared to English

According to Pham [11], Vietnamese is an isolating language, so it does not use

bound morphemes to express grammatical features such as number (singular/plural)
and tense but relies on word order and function words.
In terms of word, there have been controversial ideas of what constitutes a word in
Vietnamese. When viewing that a syllable bearing a meaningful unit is a word, “me
con” can be orthographically separated into 2 words “me” and “con,” denoting two
different subjects and translated into two English words “mother” and “child”. Also,
“me con” can be orthographically separated into 2 words “me” and “con,” denoting a
single subject and translated into two English words “my mother”. Moreover, “me
con” may be viewed as a compound word and translated into mother–child relations
because it signifies a single concept of mother–child relations (Do [12]) (illustrated in
Table 1).
At the lexical–semantic level, words in Vietnamese and English share some similar
characteristics as follows: (1) Words can be divided into content and function words.
Content words bear lexical meaning, whereas function words relate content words to
each other; (2) Content words may be further divided into word classes including
nouns, verbs, and adjectives; and (3) Content words may have more than one mean-
ing or belong to more than one-word class, with meaning and grammatical class
disambiguated by sentence context.
However, there are some differences in English words and Vietnamese words
when word class is changed (Bauer [13]). In English, words may keep the same form
(e.g., tree bark vs. dogs bark) or change in form (e.g., sit in the chair vs. he chaired the
meeting). In Vietnamese, there is no form change (Table 2). Therefore, word forms
that may serve as nouns as well as verbs can only be distinguished within the context
of each sentence.
Regarding Vietnamese pronouns, Pham [11], Tang [14], Luong [15], and Nguyen
[16] have the similar idea that most Vietnamese kinship terms may be used as pro-
nouns to reflect age, status, gender, and blood relations. Kinship terms that serve as

Vietnamese Lexical-semantic meaning English

words translation

me con Be orthographically separated syllables and denotes two different “Mother” “child”
subjects

Be orthographically separated syllables but denotes a single My mother

subject

One compound word, signifies a single concept of mother–child Mother–child

relations relations

Table 1.
Vietnamese word, its meaning, and English equivalences.

Vietnamese English translation

Anh ấy quyết định (verb) hủy bỏ cuộc họp. He decided (verb) to cancel the meeting.

Quyết định (noun) của anh thật sáng suốt. His decision (noun) was wise.

Table 2.
Vietnamese and English words at the lexical–semantic level.

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Translatology, Translation and Interpretation – Toward a New Scientific Endeavor

Vietnamese Age Status Gender Blood

words relations

chú Older than the speaker in Has higher status than the speaker in Male Paternal
most situations some situations side

cô Older than the speaker in Has higher status than the speaker in Female Paternal
most situations some situations side

Table 3.
Vietnamese kinship terms as pronouns.

pronouns are used with persons within and outside of one’s family. Within the family
pronominal, kinship terms distinguish between paternal and maternal sides of the
family, age, gender, and blood relations as opposed to in-law status. Unfamiliar
speakers and listeners also refer to each other and themselves differently depending
on social factors, including age and status (Table 3).
Moreover, the concepts of number (singularity or plurality) and person (speaker,
listener, or third party) do not exist in Vietnamese pronouns, so a quantifier is added
before a pronoun in order to indicate plurality in Vietnamese, and the meaning of the
person reference can only be interpreted within the sentence or paragraph context.
These language characteristics of Vietnamese are not found in English, which leads to
different equivalences found in English translation depending on different contexts
(Table 4).
With regard to phrases and sentences, Vietnamese phrases and sentences are
structured through two ways of combining words and using function words, which
play a very important role in Vietnamese grammar. Due to the feature of a language
with no bound morphemes, Vietnamese verbs do not have morphemes to express
grammatical features of time (present, past, future), tense, and aspects (progressive,
perfect) as in English verbs (Vo [17]). Therefore, function words are usually put in
front of main verbs to express these grammatical meanings (Table 5).

Vietnamese kinship terms English equivalences

chú (singular) (e.g, Chú đi đâu đấy?) You (Where do you go?)

các chú (plural) (e.g, Các chú đi đâu đấy?) You (Where do you go?)

cô (singular) (e.g, Cô đi đâu đấy?) You (Where do you go?)

các cô (plural) (e.g, Các cô đi đâu đấy?) You (Where do you go?)

cháu (singular) (e.g, Cháu đi đâu đấy?) You (Where do you go?)

các cháu (plural) (e.g, Các cháu đi đâu đấy?) You (Where do you go?)

bác (singular) (e.g, Bác đi đâu đấy?) You (Where do you go?)

các bác (plural) (e.g, Các bác đi đâu đấy?) You (Where do you go?)

anh (singular) (e.g, Anh đi đâu đấy?) You (Where do you go?)

các anh (plural) (e.g, Các anh đi đâu đấy?) You (Where do you go?)

chị (singular) (e.g, Chị đi đâu đấy?) You (Where do you go?)

các chị (plural) (e.g, Các chị đi đâu đấy?) You (Where do you go?)

Table 4.
Vietnamese kinship terms and English equivalences.

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Ways of structuring Vietnamese phrases and sentences Vietnamese English translation

Combining words Anh ta lại đến. He came again

Lại đến anh ta. It’s his turn again.

Using function words (của, và, vì) anh của em My older brother

anh và em You and I

Anh vì em. I do it for you

Table 5.
Ways of structuring Vietnamese phrases and sentences.

It was hypothesized that these characteristics of Vietnamese may pose a challenge

to corpora data and caus errors if GT is used as the first step in translating a text from
Vietnamese to English. Hence, in the research, Vietnamese source text analysis and
paraphrasing are supposed to be done before GT application in order to produce high-
quality translation versions from Vietnamese to English.

3. Research methodology

3.1 Research context and participants

The study was conducted on a class of 38 juniors studying at Van Lang University
in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, during the second semester of the 2022–2023 academic
year. The study participants majoring in Translation and Interpreting in English were
divided into seven groups to deal with their translation assignments. The course they
were taking was Translation 2, which lasts 12 weeks. Their weekly assignments are
Vietnamese-English translation and vice versa, but only Vietnamese-English transla-
tion was the focus in the study.

3.2 Methodology and research Instruments

Since the participants’ perspectives and experiences were central, qualitative/

interpretative method was deemed appropriate for the study. The study made use of
nonparticipant observations and semi-structured interviews in the duration of the
course. Nonparticipant observations were used as an additional data tool for the
present study because this research instrument allowed understanding the phenome-
non in context while still being separated from what was being observed. Observa-
tions helped contextualize findings from interviews and ensured that the data from
interviews were reliable. Semi-structured interview was adopted as it allowed for in-
depth responses rather than yes or no answers.
In our study, on the second week of the course, a demonstration of translation
using GT was given to the students and a Vietnamese text was used as a sample. A
weekly assignment was then given to the groups of students, and their translation
activities were observed by the author. The author’s observations were done in
10 weeks. Every week, a group’s final product would be randomly chosen to get
comments from other class members as well as the lecturer, and then, an interview
was given to the group.
The translation process including 2 stages was demonstrated in the study as
follows:
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Translatology, Translation and Interpretation – Toward a New Scientific Endeavor

1. Pre-translation stage: Analyzing and paraphrasing the source text

Step 1: Read through the text and get the main idea of the text.
Step 2: Identify the time setting and the aspect in the text to identify tenses that
are likely to be used in the target translation text.
Step 3: Separate every Vietnamese sentence into different syntactic units such as
subject, verb, object, adverb, clauses, and phrases.
Step 4: Paraphrase these sentences simulating the structure of English sentences.

2. Translation stage: Using GT and editing the target text with human edition
Step 5: Use GT to translate the paraphrased sentences.
Step 6: Edit the translation text to have the final product.

4. Results and discussion

4.1 What difficulties may learners have when translating a text from Vietnamese
to English?

The results from the study indicate that the biggest difficulties most of the groups
dealt with were the structure of sentences, particularly with long and complex
sentences. Some of their ideas were “it was impossible for us to identify which is the main
clause and which is the subordinate clause,” or “the sentence is long and we found it difficult
to locate its subject, its verbs and other elements,” or “it took much time to identify the
subject and its verb in a sentence”. They also said that “Vietnamese grammar is confusing;
it is not easy to identify a phrase is a subject or a predicate”. In addition, they said,
“Subjects in Vietnamese texts are often very long, so it is not easy to locate them” or “Google
Translate works best with simple and clear sentences. Avoid using complicated vocabulary
or grammar structures that may confuse the translation tool”.
The students’ answers also show that vocabulary, particularly nouns and verbs, was
also a challenge to the students. Some students found troubled to deal with compound
nouns and noun phrases or verb phrases: “We could not identify which word is the main
noun and which one functions as its modifying elements in a noun phrase, and which word is
the main verb and which one functions as its modifying elements in a verb phrase.” Besides,
they could not be sure if a word in a Vietnamese sentence was a verb or a noun when
looking at the surface structure of the sentence. In addition, in some cases, they did not
understand the meaning of some Sino-Vietnamese words which are part of Vietnamese
language (e.g, đại lý bao tiêu, a technical term means offtake agency).
Regarding vocabulary use, the term “the contexts of the source text” is also men-
tioned when the seven groups considered choosing appropriate vocabulary. “Google
Translate is unable to understand the contexts of the source text or the target text, which
makes it highly possible that Google Translate sometimes offers nonsensical literal trans-
lations;” “I replace some of the wrong word choices with the more appropriate terms when
they are needed in the different contexts;” “Google Translate may not always consider the
context of the text being translated. Keep in mind that certain words or phrases may have
different meanings depending on the context in which they are used” or “Certain phrases can
also get lost in translation without the right context”.
It is surprising that there were two ideas that cultural factors implied in Vietnam-
ese texts, and confusing meaning in Vietnamese texts also created some challenges to
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Using Google Translate Effectively and Efficiently in Translating Vietnamese Texts into…
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.1003009

their translation. “You must carefully read the text, especially the specialized terms, slang
words, to make sure that you can understand the layers of hidden meanings” or “Google
Translate cannot recognize idioms, slangs”.

4.2 How can GT be used effectively and efficiently to produce high-quality

translation versions from Vietnamese into English?

Table 6 displays a source text in Vietnamese and a translation version from GT

without any modification. The two sentences in the Vietnamese source text are trans-
lated into three English sentences using GT in which Sentence 1 is not grammatically
correct because it does not have the subject and Sentence 2 and Sentence 3 are also
grammatically and semantically incorrect.

Source text written in Vietnamese Translation version into English using GT

without any modification

Sentence 1: Thực hiện Quyết định số 53/1999/QĐ- Sentence 1: Implementing the Prime Minister’s
TTg của Thủ Tướng về một số biện pháp khuyến Decision No. 53/1999/QD-TTg on A number of
khích đầu tư trực tiếp nước ngoài, từ ngày 1.7.1999, measures to encourage foreign direct investment,
giảm giá một số mặt hàng, phí, lệ phí một số loại from July 1, 1999, reducing prices of a number of
dịch vụ cho các doanh nghiệp có vốn đầu tư trực tiếp goods, fees and charges for a number of services for
nước ngoài. Sentence 2:Theo đó, các doanh nghiệp foreign direct investment enterprises.
có vốn đầu tư nước ngoài được hưởng giá mua điện Sentence 2: Accordingly, foreign-invested
trong giờ sản xuất bình thường 7,5 cents/KWH, giá enterprises are entitled to the electricity purchase
lắp đặt điện thoại nội hạt đối với doanh nghiệp và price during normal production hours of 7.5 cents/
người nước ngoài áp dụng như mức quy định đối với KWH, the local telephone installation price for
doanh nghiệp trong nước và người Việt Nam, giá businesses and foreigners is applied as regulated
cước thuê bao điện thoại là 10USD/máy/tháng và rate.
giảm bình quân giá cước viễn thông quốc tế hiện Sentence 3: For domestic enterprises and
hành từ Việt Nam đi các nước. Vietnamese people, the telephone subscription fee
is 10 USD/phone/month and reduces the average
current international telecommunications charges
from Vietnam to other countries.

Table 6.
Translation version into English using GT without any modification.

Source text in Vietnamese Analyzing the source text The source text paraphrased

Sentence 1: Thực hiện Quyết định 1. Context Theo Quyết định số

số 53/1999/QĐ-TTg của Thủ • time: future 53/1999/QĐ-TTg của
Tướng về một số biện pháp • aspect: not perfect Thủ Tướng về một số
khuyến khích đầu tư trực tiếp • tense: simple future biện pháp khuyến
nước ngoài, từ ngày 1.7.1999, 2. Sentence structure: khích đầu tư trực tiếp
giảm giá một số mặt hàng, phí, lệ prepositional phrase + Subject nước ngoài, từ ngày
phí một số loại dịch vụ cho các + Verb 1.7.1999, giá một số
doanh nghiệp có vốn đầu tư trực • prepositional phrase: “Thực mặt hàng, phí, và lệ
tiếp nước ngoài. hiện … nước ngoài, từ ngày phí một số loại dịch vụ
1.7.1999,”: “Thực hiện” cho các doanh nghiệp
(verb) is obmitted, “Theo” có vốn đầu tư trực tiếp
(function word) is added nước ngoài sẽ được
• subject: “giá một số mặt giảm
hàng, phí, và lệ phí một số
loại dịch vụ cho các doanh
nghiệp có vốn đầu tư trực
tiếp nước ngoài”
• verb: giảm (giá)

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Translatology, Translation and Interpretation – Toward a New Scientific Endeavor

Source text in Vietnamese Analyzing the source text The source text paraphrased

Theo đó, các doanh nghiệp có vốn 1. Context Theo đó, giá mua điện
đầu tư nước ngoài được hưởng giá • time: future trong giờ sản xuất bình
mua điện trong giờ sản xuất bình • aspect: not perfect thường sẽ là 7,5 cents/
thường 7,5 cents/KWH, giá lắp • tense: simple future KWH cho các doanh
đặt điện thoại nội hạt đối với 2. Sentence structure: adverb + nghiệp có vốn đầu tư
doanh nghiệp và người nước ngoài Clause 1+ Clause 2 + Clause 3 nước ngoài; giá lắp đặt
áp dụng như mức quy định đối với • adverb: “Theo đó,” điện thoại nội hạt cho
doanh nghiệp trong nước và người • Clause 1: “các doanh nghiệp doanh nghiệp nước
Việt Nam, giá cước thuê bao điện có vốn đầu tư nước ngoài ngoài và người nước
thoại là 10USD/máy/tháng và được hưởng giá mua điện ngoài sẽ bằng với giá
giảm bình quân giá cước viễn trong giờ sản xuất bình lắp đặt điện thoại nội
thông quốc tế hiện hành từ Việt thường 7,5 cents/KWH” hạt cho doanh nghiệp
Nam đi các nước. • Clause 2: “giá lắp đặt điện trong nước và người
thoại nội hạt đối với doanh Việt Nam; giá cước
nghiệp và người nước ngoài thuê bao điện thoại sẽ
áp dụng như mức quy định là 10USD/máy/tháng;
đối với doanh nghiệp trong và giá cước viễn thông
nước và người Việt Nam,” quốc tế hiện hành từ
• Clause 3: “giá cước thuê bao Việt Nam đi các nước
điện thoại là 10USD / máy / sẽ giảm bình quân.
tháng”
• Clause 4: “và giảm bình
quân giá cước viễn thông
quốc tế hiện hành từ Việt
Nam đi các nước.”

Table 7.
Analyzing and paraphrasing the source text.

Table 7 depicts the pre-translation stage in which the source text is analyzed and
paraphrased before the paraphrased source text is translated using GT. The two
sentences in the Vietnamese source text were paraphrased; the word order was
adjusted; some words were added; and some words were omitted or replaced.
Translation stage is indicated in Table 8. The source texts paraphrased are then
translated using GT. In the translation version using GT without human edition, verb
tenses are correct; the sentences are grammatically and semantically right to some
extent. However, human edition that is mainly related to word choice is certainly a
necessary requirement to have the best quality translation product.

The source text paraphrased Translation version using GT Translation version using GT
without human edition with human edition

Theo Quyết định số 53/1999/QĐ- According to the Prime Minister’s In accordance with Decision No.
TTg của Thủ Tướng về một số biện Decision No. 53/1999/QD-TTg on 53/1999/QD-TTg by the Prime
pháp khuyến khích đầu tư trực a number of measures to Minister concerning a number of
tiếp nước ngoài, từ ngày 1.7.1999, encourage foreign direct incentives to be granted to
giá một số mặt hàng, phí, và lệ phí investment, from July 1, 1999, the foreign direct investment, from
một số loại dịch vụ cho các doanh prices of some Goods, fees, and July 1st 1999, the prices of a
nghiệp có vốn đầu tư trực tiếp charges for a number of services number of commodities, costs,
nước ngoài sẽ được giảm. for foreign direct investment and fees charged on several
enterprises will be reduced. services offered to foreign -
invested enterprises will be
reduced.

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Using Google Translate Effectively and Efficiently in Translating Vietnamese Texts into…
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.1003009

The source text paraphrased Translation version using GT Translation version using GT
without human edition with human edition

Sentence 2: Theo đó, giá mua điện Accordingly, the electricity Accordingly, the power cost
trong giờ sản xuất bình thường sẽ purchase price during normal during the normal operating
là 7,5 cents/KWH cho các doanh production hours will be 7.5 hours will be 7.5 cents/KWH for
nghiệp có vốn đầu tư nước ngoài; cents/KWH for foreign-invested foreign-invested enterprises; the
giá lắp đặt điện thoại nội hạt cho enterprises; the installation price in-country telephone installation
doanh nghiệp nước ngoài và người of local telephones for foreign costs for foreign enterprises and
nước ngoài sẽ bằng với giá lắp đặt enterprises and foreigners will be foreigners will be the same as
điện thoại nội hạt cho doanh equal to the price of installing those for domestic enterprises
nghiệp trong nước và người Việt local telephones for domestic and Vietnamese people; the
Nam; giá cước thuê bao điện thoại enterprises and Vietnamese phone subscription rate will be
sẽ là 10USD/máy/tháng; và giá people; phone subscription fee 10USD/phone/month; and the
cước viễn thông quốc tế hiện hành will be 10USD/phone/month; and current international
từ Việt Nam đi các nước sẽ giảm current international telecommunications rates from
bình quân. telecommunications charges from Vietnam to other countries will
Vietnam to other countries will decrease on average.
decrease on average.

Table 8.
Using GT and editing the target text.

5. Conclusion

Based on the results collected and analyzed, the following conclusions can be
drawn:

1. The difficulties the learners may have when translating a text from Vietnamese
to English are mainly divided into two groups including difficulties at
grammatical level and vocabulary level. The term “grammatical level” refers
context, sentence structure, and phrase structure of the source text, while the
term “vocabulary level” contains words, technical terms, or terms concerning
cultural aspects of the source text.

2. GT is used more effectively and efficiently producing high-quality translation

versions when human intervention is made before GT application and human
edition is done after GT adoption. In response to the difficulties at grammatical
level, pre-translation stage with analysis and paraphrase of the source text should
be done before GT is applied. Translation stage with GT application and human
edition is done to deal with the difficulties at vocabulary level.

Besides, translation strategies and techniques are also practiced and learners’
translation ability is also improved, which is the important goal of translation teaching
and learning.

6. Recommendations and implications

While analyzing and paraphrasing the source text before GT application allowed
learners to have more opportunities to practice translation techniques and to produce
good translation products in this study, it is recommended that teachers’ demonstra-
tion at the very beginning of the course and teachers’ feedback after students’
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Translatology, Translation and Interpretation – Toward a New Scientific Endeavor

translation are extremely important. The demonstration provided is a vital guidance

of translation techniques that students should master to do their tasks efficiently and
effectively; the feedback given may be extensive explanation of specialized notions, or
knowledge of vocabulary and grammatical structures, which learners need.
Moreover, learners’ competence in the source and target languages also plays an
important role in the success of the machine translation application as it is required
that potential translators should rely on a wealth of vocabulary, grammar, and cultural
aspects of these languages in order to do text analysis and paraphrase. To do so,
teachers’ choice on the source text and teachers’ feedback as a grammar review after
each translation product as are extremely crucial, which may contribute to learners’
progress.

Author details

Hanh Truong
Van Lang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

*Address all correspondence to: [email protected]

© 2023 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided
the original work is properly cited.
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Using Google Translate Effectively and Efficiently in Translating Vietnamese Texts into…
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.1003009

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