This document discusses using Google Translate to support language awareness and second language learning. It argues that translation can illuminate differences between languages and point out specific contrasts between a student's first and target second languages. The document outlines several ways Google Translate can be used pedagogically, such as having students translate between languages to explore word choices and noticing errors. It suggests challenging students with language that is hard to directly translate due to being highly contextual, ambiguous, or local. Frameworks for teaching with translation and tools for visual analysis and annotation are also mentioned.

1. Who’s afraid of Google
Translate?: An *abbreviated*
toolkit to support language
awareness and L2 learning
through translation
NERALLT 2016
Mt. Holyoke College
10/27/2016
David Malinowski
Yale Center for Language Study
david.malinowski@yale.edu

3. A few merits of translation for
L2 awareness & learning
 “Language awareness, as an educational goal,
holds that it is necessary (or at least useful) at
times to focus systematically on language […]
 to deal with problems that occur in the language-
using process
 to reach higher levels of understanding and use” –
van Lier, 1995, p. 4)
 Translation useful for “illuminat[ing] the nature of
language per se as well as pointing to specific
contrasts between the students’ L1 and the target
L2” (Godwin-Jones, 2015, p. 14)

4. Why TILT, and How? (Cook, 2010)
 TILT as
technological
education
 TILT as social reform
 TILT as humanistic
education
 TILT as academic
education
 Corrected close translation
 Word-for-word translation
 Teaching vocab
 Discussion of trans. problems
 Communicative translation
 ‘Sandwiching’ as fluency aid
 TILT in mixed-language classes
 TILT for teachers who don’t speak
their students’ language(s)

5. A few applications
 Use Google Translate to explore alternative
lexical, grammatical, phrasing, register choices
 Have students produce TL texts and use GT to
translate back into students’ native language(s)
 Compare ‘native’ TL texts with professional
translations translated back to the TL

6. My suggestion
 Challenge students to test the limits of GT with
language that can’t stand on its own—language
that is…
 Part of multimodal ensembles
 Highly contextualized
 Ambiguous
 Poetic
 Local

10. My suggestion
 Challenge students to test the limits of GT with
language that can’t stand on its own—language
that is…
 Part of multimodal ensembles
 Highly contextualized
 Ambiguous
 Poetic
 Local: ‘language’ as unique utterances
situated in place, time, and culture

11. Dongdaemun, Seoul, 1994 – my ‘first sign’ as a Korean learner

13. trees/bushes obj.
Let’s love

14. GT EKE : “Keep off” = “막다” = “block”

15. GT KEK: “나무를 사랑합시다”
= “Let us love trees”
= “우리에게 사랑나무를 보자”

16. What German word
belongs on the white sign?

17. What German word
belongs on the white sign?

22. My suggestion
 Challenge students to test the limits of GT with
language that can’t stand on its own—language
that is…
 Part of multimodal ensembles
 Highly contextualized
 Ambiguous
 Poetic
 Local: ‘language’ as unique utterances
situated in place, time, and culture

23. (possible) Pedagogical Frameworks
Situated
Practice
Overt
Instruction
Critical
Framing
Transformed
Practice
Pedagogy of Multiliteracies
Adapted from FLLITE (Foreign Languages & the Literary in the Everyday)
Hallidayan
Meta-
functions
What is it? Questions
Textual How
communi-
cation is
textualized
How are
symbolic
resources
used
Inter-
personal
How
semiosis
enacts
relations
How do signs
position authors,
readers, you?
Ideational ‘what’ is
expressed
through
language+
What is
expressed (e.g.,
differently in diff.
langs)

24. (just a few) Tools
Visualization
 Google Street View
 JuxtaposeJS
(example)
 VisualEyes
Mapping
 Siftr (example)
 Cityscape
Annotation &
discussion
 Diigo
 NowComment
(example)
 Mediathread
 Annotorious
See the DiRT (Digital Research Tools) Directory for many more!

25. Who’s afraid of Google
Translate?: An *abbreviated*
toolkit to support language
awareness and L2 learning
through translation
NERALLT 2016
Mt. Holyoke College
10/27/2016
David Malinowski
Yale Center for Language Study
david.malinowski@yale.edu