I think all language teachers have been dealing with this problem and almost all the L2 learners at some point tend to use an online translator to do their job!
I liked the examples that Charlene Polio has provided in his article. Interestingly, most of the time, the translations by online translators turn to comic sentences in the traget language and it is easy for the teacher to recognize who has done the job!
It is mentioned in the article that teacher should use this as a teachable moment. I'm not sure if this rule can be applied to any situation in class, for example for projects and assignments that are counted for mark. As a language teacher, I would prefer a short simple sentence written by the student to a complicated and sophisticated sentence written by an online translator. The students should learn that they can use these tools when practicing, not for final assignments and also they should know that these tools are not always reliable.
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