The use of machine translation (MT) in the academic context has increased in recent years. Hence, language teachers have found it difficult to ignore MT, which has led to some concerns. Among the concerns, its accuracy has become a major factor that shapes language teachers’ pedagogical decision to use MT in their language classrooms. Despite the urgency of the issue, studies on MT output quality in foreign language education remain scarce. Moreover, as MT is advancing every year, updated studies are imperative. Therefore, the present study investigated the quality of MT outputs (Google Translate) from Korean to English by comparing it with the English-translated texts of intermediate English as a foreign language students. The study also examined the factors within the source texts that affect the quality of MT outputs. Five trained evaluators examined multiple aspects of MT output samples (N = 104) and students’ English texts (N = 104), including mechanics, vocabulary, grammar, and context. The results showed that both texts were equally comprehensible, but MT outperformed the students in most aspects under investigation. The study further found that only two factors in the source texts – punctuation and sentence complexity – influenced MT output quality, whereas lexical and grammatical accuracy, lexical diversity, and contextual understanding did not affect it. Based on the results, the study presents classroom implications for using MT for educational purposes.

中文翻译：

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机器翻译输出质量及源文本影响因素调查

近年来，机器翻译 (MT) 在学术环境中的使用有所增加。因此，语言教师发现很难忽视机器翻译，这引起了一些担忧。在这些担忧中，它的准确性已成为影响语言教师在语言课堂中使用机器翻译的教学决策的主要因素。尽管这个问题很紧迫，但关于外语教育机器翻译输出质量的研究仍然很少。此外，随着机器翻译每年都在进步，更新的研究势在必行。因此，本研究通过与作为外语学生的中级英语的英译文本进行比较，调查了从韩语到英语的 MT 输出（谷歌翻译）的质量。该研究还检查了源文本中影响 MT 输出质量的因素。ñ= 104) 和学生的英文课文 (ñ= 104)，包括机制、词汇、语法和上下文。结果表明，两篇课文的理解程度相同，但 MT 在所调查的大多数方面都优于学生。研究进一步发现，源文本中只有两个因素——标点符号和句子复杂性——影响机器翻译输出质量，而词汇和语法准确性、词汇多样性和上下文理解不影响它。根据结果​​，该研究提出了将 MT 用于教育目的的课堂意义。