To Google Translate or not to Google Translate? Beginner Latin language learners and skill development: a case study

Abstract

Google Translate is a free and easily accessible Web-based machine translation program that today enables users to upload text in over 100 languages. Although the accuracy of Google Translate has improved significantly for modern language pairs since Google replaced its phrase-based statistical system with a neural machine translation system in late 2016, its ability to translate Latin to English and English to Latin was relatively poor in 2024 and 2025. The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in current scholarship by undertaking a case study on the use of Google Translate by tertiary-level beginner Latin students. It asks whether student use of Google Translate in assessment exercises submitted in an ‘Introductory Latin’ course in 2024 and 2025 helped them to build foundational Latin grammar, reading, and comprehension skills successfully. It also evaluates the impact on learning and skill development by analysing student use of Google Translate at different stages of their ‘Introductory Latin’ course, examining whether these beginner Latin students were able to identify many of Google Translate’s grammatical and lexical errors, or recognise misleading translations from English into Latin and vice versa.