Remarks on Vietnamese Translations of English Idioms Generated by Google Translate and EFL Students

Abstract

Over the past decade, Google Translate (GT) has provoked debates about its accuracy and effectiveness regardless of its worldwide popularity. This study attempts to investigate the capability and acceptability of GT and EFL students in translating English idioms into Vietnamese. Twenty idioms were assigned to GT and ten English-majored undergraduate students to have them translated into Vietnamese. Then, the translated versions of the students and GT were delivered to seven experienced English teachers for their remarks. The remarks revealed that the average percentage of agreement with GT was 34.86%, while the students’ translations were found to be accepted. The results uncovered that GT had not provided decent interpretations of the idioms. This study concludes that GT cannot currently be exploited as an idiom learning tool.