Presentation: Reviewing Online Translations

Slide 1 of 7 · Settling starter · MFL · Year 9

5 minutes

Élise’s email, and what the machine made of it

Free translation tools are good enough that the mistakes they make are the hard ones to spot: real English words, in real sentences, meaning the wrong thing. You have a correct French email (Text A) and a machine’s English version of it (Text B).

While the register is called: write your name, class and date on your worksheet, then read Text A, then Text B, on the stimulus sheet. Do not mark anything yet.

Starter question: Text B says Élise was “deceived” on the Monday morning. What is the French word, and what does it really mean? The glossary at the bottom of the sheet will help.

DCF: Producing → Evaluating and improving digital content No computers needed · you are judging a translation, not generating one

Slide 2 of 7 · Today’s brief and the 4 error types · MFL · Year 9

4 minutes

Your brief: name every error, fix it, then judge the machine

You will complete an error log for the 9 numbered passages in Text B (only 8 are wrong), write the whole email out in clean natural English, then say when you would and would not trust a machine with this job.

False friend

Looks like an English word but means something else. Librairie is a bookshop, not a library.

Literal idiom

An expression translated word by word so the meaning falls out. Il pleut des cordes is “it is pouring down”, not “it rains ropes”.

Wrong register

The right meaning at the wrong level of formality: a friendly text turned into a business letter.

Grammar carried over

French structure left standing in the English: an article that should go, a tense formed the French way, a name never translated.

LNF: Literacy → Translanguaging → Translanguaging Read the 4 types, then the glossary on the stimulus sheet

Slide 3 of 7 · Step 3: the error log · MFL · Year 9

18 minutes

Step 3: complete the error log, one row per numbered passage

9 passages are numbered in Text B. 8 are genuine errors. 1 is correct: say so and say why, rather than inventing a fault for it. Quote the French that caused each error.

No.	The machine’s English	Error type	What it should say	The French that caused it
1	“Greetings Megan!”	Wrong register	“Hi Megan!”	Salut ! is the informal greeting between friends; “Greetings” is the register of a formal letter.

Step 3 on your worksheet · 18 minutes Evidence every correction with the French word or phrase

Supply teacher script (no subject knowledge needed)

Say aloud: “Row 1 is on the board as a model. Fill in rows 2 to 9. For each one give the error type, what it should say, and the French word or phrase that caused it. One of the nine passages is actually fine. Deciding which is part of the task, so do not force a fault on it.”

Quick check: 2 “my class is gone to”: grammar carried over, “my class went to” (ma classe est allée, perfect tense with être). 3 “the country of Galles”: grammar carried over, proper noun untranslated, “Wales” (le pays de Galles). 4 “The Monday morning”: grammar carried over, “On the Monday morning” (Le lundi matin). 5 “deceived”: false friend, “disappointed” (déçue). 6 “My exchange partners”: no error, leave it (Mes correspondants; the trap would have been “my correspondents” and the machine avoided it). 7 “sympathetic”: false friend, “really friendly” or “really nice” (sympathiques). 8 “Actually,”: false friend, “At the moment,” or “Right now,” (Actuellement; “actually” is en fait). 9 “I am working of tear-up-foot”: literal idiom, “I am working flat out” (je travaille d’arrache-pied).

Walk the room: pupils who “fix” passage 6 have lost the point of the task; ask them to read the glossary entry for un correspondant again. Passage 8 is the dangerous one because the English sentence still reads perfectly well.

Slide 4 of 7 · Step 4: the clean translation · MFL · Year 9

12 minutes

Step 4: write the whole email in English a friend would actually write

Keep Élise’s tone: she is 14, she is writing to someone she likes, and she is slightly stressed about a deadline. Natural English is more than the absence of errors.

Model opening: “Hi Megan! My name’s Élise and I live in Rennes, in Brittany. Last week my class went to Wales on a school exchange. We visited Caerphilly castle and we had Welsh cakes at the covered market in Cardiff.”

Notice: contractions (“My name’s”, “I’m”) because a 14-year-old writing to a friend uses them; “had Welsh cakes” rather than “ate”.

Step 4 on your worksheet · 12 minutes, in silence Fix the 2 unnumbered mistakes too if you spot them

Supply teacher script (no subject knowledge needed)

Say aloud: “12 minutes in silence. Write the whole email out in the lined space on page 2, in English a real friend would write. The first paragraph is on the board as a model; the rest is yours. Use your error log, and keep her chatty tone all the way through.”

Quick check (rest of the model): “On the Monday morning I was a bit disappointed because it rained non-stop. Luckily it was nice in the afternoon and we got to walk along the bay. My exchange partners are really friendly and they taught me a few words of Welsh. At the moment I’m putting together a presentation about Wales for my English teacher. I have to hand it in by Friday, so I’m working flat out. Write back soon! Élise”. Accept close variants; the test is whether it sounds like a real 14-year-old.

Walk the room: “an exposé” should become “a presentation” (un exposé is a class talk, not investigative journalism), and “the country of Galles” appears a second time in the last paragraph and should be “Wales” there too. These are the 2 unnumbered mistakes from the extension; praise anyone who catches them.

Slide 5 of 7 · Step 5: the judgement question · MFL · Year 9

5 minutes

Step 5: “There is no point learning this, the translator got most of it right.”

Answer your classmate in 3 or 4 sentences. Cover all 3 parts:

What a machine translation is genuinely useful for.
What it must not be used for.
How you can tell the difference without already knowing the answer: a test somebody could apply to a language they do not speak.

DCF: Producing → Evaluating and improving digital content Getting most of it right is exactly what makes it risky

Supply teacher script (no subject knowledge needed)

Say aloud: “5 minutes. A classmate says there is no point learning this because the translator got most of it right. Answer them in 3 or 4 sentences, covering the 3 bullet points on the board. The third one is the hardest: give a test that works even if you do not speak the language.”

Quick check: a secure answer says a translator is useful for the gist (working out what a French web page is about, checking a single half-forgotten word) because there you can afford to be roughly right; it must not be used for anything somebody will read as though you wrote it (an email to a partner school, an exam answer, anything where the wrong word changes the meaning, like “deceived” for “disappointed”); and the test is to read the English on its own and ask whether a real person would say it that way, then check suspicious words in a dictionary both ways round: look up the English you were given and see whether the French word comes back. If it does not, it is a false friend.

Slide 6 of 7 · Step 6: swap and check · MFL · Year 9

3 minutes

Step 6: swap, and check your partner left passage 6 alone

Swap worksheets. Check your partner spotted the correct passage and did not “fix” it. Tick the success criteria they have met, then swap back and correct 1 thing.

I find all 8 errors and I leave the correct passage alone, saying why it is right.
I name the type of each error rather than just marking it wrong.
For every error I quote the French word or phrase that caused it.
My clean translation reads like natural English at Élise’s age and keeps her friendly tone.
My judgement gives a test somebody could apply to a language they do not speak.

3 minutes · partner check Finished early? Find the 2 mistakes in Text B that are not numbered

Slide 7 of 7 · Plenary review · MFL · Year 9

3 minutes

Quick-check answers before handing in

Check your main answers before your worksheets are collected.

Question	Correct answer
Which numbered passage in Text B is correct?	Passage 6, “My exchange partners”, from Mes correspondants.
What type of error is “I am working of tear-up-foot”, and what should it say?	Literal idiom. Je travaille d’arrache-pied means “I am working flat out”.
Why is “Actually,” for Actuellement the most dangerous error on the sheet?	It is a false friend (it means “at the moment”) and the English sentence still reads perfectly well, so nothing warns you.

Check your name and class are on your worksheet Leave stimulus sheets neat on the desk