Assesing the Accuracy of Translation Result of Kataku Version 1.1 and Transtool 10 from English to Indonesian and Its Implication on Language Teaching

Abstract

In the context of translating from English into Indonesian, machine translations such as Kataku and Transtool have been mostly employed as pedagogical tools in learning and teaching reading of English as a Foreign Language. Whether teachers and students rely heavily or just refer to the machine translations as a helping tool in understanding the content of the text through reading, the question on the accuracy of the translation result produced by those machine translations is inevitable. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to assess the accuracy of the translation result produced by Transtool 10 and Kataku version 1.1, as the latest version of the time this study was designed, also as the most used machine translations and then draw its pedagogic implication on teaching and learning English as a Foreign Language, especially on reading skills. This study employed qualitative methods that are descriptive in nature. The qualitative paradigm applied is embedded case study with document analysis, Focus Group Discussion, and questionnaires as data collection techniques. The data are clauses and phrases from three different English textbooks: “Islamic Life and Thought”, “Biology Second Edition”, and “Nelson Book of Pediatrics”. The data analysis techniques used are domain analysis, taxonomy analysis, componential analysis and finding cultural values. The result of the study shows that Transtool 10 has a slightly better score of accuracy than Kataku 1.1. Nevertehless, the score of the accuracy of both machine translations is of medium accuracy, meaning that the original message in Source Text is not delivered well in the translation. Furthermore, the two machine translations translate phrases more accurately than clauses. It is because clauses have more complex syntax structure than phrases. Therefore, in teaching and learning reading, both machine translations should better be referred to in terms of finding the meaning of phrases, instead of clauses. All in all, Kataku 1.1 and Transtool 10 should not be made sole pedagogical tools in teaching and learning reading of EFL. Cross-reference with other tools is highly recommended