Beyond seeking equivalents: exploring Chinese master’s students’ use of machine translation as a translanguaging process in EAP writing

ABSTRACT

Purpose

This study employs the translanguaging theory to explore how Chinese master’s students use machine translation (MT) as part of their semiotic and spatial repertoires in the English for academic purpose (EAP) writing process.

Design

The study gathered data through interviews, field observations, screen recordings, artifacts of written texts, and post-class conversations to show students’ use of MT and their perceived affordances and constraints. The data were subject to thematic analysis.

Findings

Students flexibly employed their biliteracy and digital literacy to improve MT outputs. They also integrated MT with other semiotic and spatial resources, which empowered their negotiation of linguistic and cultural differences. However, the challenges for the translanguaging approach to using MT arose from the emphasis on monolithic language standards over students’ rhetorical agency and linguistic flexibility in the EAP educational context.

Originality/value

This study reveals that multilingual learners could draw upon the full range of their meaning-making toolkits, encompassing linguistic, semiotic, and cultural resources with spatial affordance in their MT engagement in EAP writing. The study suggests that EAP education should value students as bilingual/multilingual authors who can compose with a broad spectrum of linguistic, multimodal, and spatial resources, with MT being a key component, to enrich their learning practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Machine translation
• English for academic purpose writing
• translanguaging
• spatial repertoire
• bilingualism

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the participants in our study. Sincere thanks go to Dr Vander Viana in the University of Edinburgh for his valuable suggestions and insightful comments on the early work of this article. We also express our gratitude to the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback which has greatly strengthened this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chang Liu

Chang Liu is a doctorate student in the School of Foreign Languages, Southeast University. Her research interests include translanguaging writing and multilingual education.

Meihua Chen

Dr. Chen Meihua is a professor of linguistics in the School of Foreign Languages, Southeast University. Her research interests are in the field of applied linguistics and language policy and planning.