Evaluation of Translation output of Arabic News Headlines via Free Online Machine Translation Systems

Abstract

This study focuses on evaluating Free Online Machine Translation Systems; namely Google Translate and Microsoft Bing Translator. It aims to evaluate to what extent that translations produced by Google Translate and Microsoft Bing translator systems compared to human translation acceptable in terms of clarity, accuracy and style. A questionnaire is designed and distributed to (54) university staff of languages at Sudan University of Science and Technology, and professional and free lance translators at translation institutions. The study uses the descriptive analytical method and SPSS to analyze the data statistically. The study concludes that Google Translate is better than Bing Translator in terms of clarity, accuracy and style. The study recommends conducting further studies with a larger number of news headlines to present a clear picture of the investigated phenomenon. Further studies and researches can be carried on to disprove or verify these findings. Further studies may be carried on to investigate other MT systems to uncover their linguistic features.