Machine Translators and Indigenous Knowledge in Hausa Language: A Case for Google and Facebook Translators

Abstract

The prominence of technology and its intractable effects on every sector of human life in the world has been acknowledged. In the field of translation, technological advancement has influenced the process of translation. The questions that beg for answers therefore are? How adequate are these technological translation machines? Can these machines transport successfully cultural relics and imports embedded in a given corpus to the target language?  These questions provided the impetus for this study. This study examines machine translated corpora and their intelligibility with a view to ascertaining their adequacy and effects on information in Nigerian indigenous languages.  Quantitative research method was adopted for this study. Text corpus in Hausa languages were subjected to Google translation machine and Facebook translation system. The study revealed that the translated corporal were fairly intelligible; machine lexical choices were ambiguous; Translation does not recognize proper nouns and so places them arbitrarily. On the basis of these findings, it is recommended, amongst others, that more Hausa words are encrypted into the translation machine. Translation machine should be improved upon to carter for the adequacies detected.

Keywords: Machine Translation, Technology, Translation, Facebook Translation, Google Translation, Hausa Indigenous Knowledge