Assessment of Users Perception of a English to Yoruba Computer Aided Translation Teaching System (CATTS) for Climate Change Literacy

Abstract

ABSTRACT

Increasing environmental awareness and education on climate change has been identified as potential tools to combat climate change crisis. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), all parties to the convention are responsible for launching educational and public awareness initiatives on climate change, as well as making sure that the general public accesses programs and information on the subject.

Education, particularly digital education has been identified as a potential tool to combat climate change. However, a very huge percentage of instructional materials and digital contents on the internet on climate change are in English language which is not the native language understood by the majority of the population of Africans. Translation and interpretation are the bridges that make cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communication possible.

In this paper an assessment of user’s perception of a English to Yoruba Computer Aided Translation Teaching System (CATTS) for Climate Change Literacy was carried out. A questionnaire was developed and administered to different categories of respondents who understand both English language and Yoruba language with or without prior knowledge of climate change literacy and green innovation entrepreneurship. After interacting with the developed Computer Aided Translation Teaching System (CATTS) for Climate Change Literacy (CCL) in Yoruba language, the uses were evaluated on the level of translation accuracy of the system on CCL concepts, the system’s reliability, user friendliness, users understandability of CCL and the need to mitigate the activities that contributes to climate change. The system had an overall 91.3% translation accuracy and 87.0% translation error.  Statistical analysis of respondent feedback from the survey conducted revealed that users were satisfied with the developed system with a significant majority, 89.0% agreeing that employing the Computer Aided Translation System for translation could enhance the teaching and understanding of Climate Change in Yoruba language, the translation efficiency, usability and reliability of the system were highly rated.