Using Free On-line Services in Machine Translation Teaching

This paper discusses the role that can be played in teaching machine translation (MT) by free on-line MT services,emphasising the advantages that they offer for didactic purposes as well as theirdrawbacks in comparison with traditional PC-based MT software. Some of the keyreasons behind the huge potential for the successful integration of on-line systemsinto MT teaching activities are explored.The paper argues that exposing students to Internet-based MT can raise their awareness on crucial issues in today’smultilingual communication processes, which are relevant inter alia to web localisation and multilingual on-linecontent management.