IT translation technology has come a long way since its inception with the advent of computers in the 1980s. However, it still cannot compare in quality with expert human translation. On the other hand, its obvious advantages are speed, convenience and ease of use, so it is extremely tempting for small businesses to rely on it instead of going to expensive professional translation companies.
We see this trend with students as well. A questionnaire was given to 165 students (Tomei and Yoneoka 2015), asking 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.
These results tell us clearly why people use online translation, but they also reveal a problem. Like most of us, very few of the students recognized the "scary" dangers inherent in using online translation without clearly understanding the possible consequences due to errors in translation.