A questionnaire was given to 165 students (68 English majors in Kumamoto, 97 non-English majors in Tochigi) in June-July 2013. The questionnaire asked what kind of internet sites they used and how they used them. These results were found:
- 87% of the students used translation websites.
- The most popular ones were: 39% google translate, 22% excite, 20% yahoo, 8% weblio, and 7% other.
- The most common usages were: 21% E-J word translation, 18% E-J document translation, 16% E-J website translation.
- Mostly, translation websites were used to translate from English (or other languages) to Japanese for words, documents and websites in that order. However, J-E translation was also relatively common.
Students had mostly positive impressions of automatic translation: 35% useful, 16% speedy, 15% replacement for dictionary, 11% easy to use, 4% easy to understand. However only 2% mentioned that it was "scary" and only 1% correct.