Three Perspectives on MT in the Classroom

This paper considers the role of translation software, especially Machine Translation (MT), in curricula for students of computational linguistics, for trainee translators and for language learners. These three sets of students have differing needs and interests, although there is some overlap between them. A brief historical view of MT in the classroom is given, including comments on the author’s 25 years of experience in the field. This is followed by discussion and examples of strategies for teaching about MT and related aspects of Language Engineering and Information Technology for the three types of student.