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Google translate, a possible revolution. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5867 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 25 of 34 09 March 2013 at 4:28pm | IP Logged | ||
I think comments on this subject are very much dependent on which language or language pair the person making the comment is referring to, because there is a great deal of variability for GT among languages. And unless this language pair is stated, then usually the comments have very little meaning. For some languages such as Dutch <> English, the accuracy is very good. But for the purpose of getting useful, free learning material, I think that GT for some languages is extremely useful. For example, you can use L2 sentences or paragraphs from native L2 material, and then use GT to get exact audio, and use the translation of L2 into L1 to confirm you understand the L2. If the L2 GT speech sythesiser is good (which it is for some languages), then you have good learning material for free. And for some of my L2s, if I could speak that L2 as well as GT speaks it, I'd be more than happy. And if I sound a bit like that quality of synthesised speech, I don't care too much. So to those using GT in this way; more power to you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 26 of 34 09 March 2013 at 11:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Not me, man. Even for English, its synthesizer is not something that I'd recommend to ESL students even though it isn't atrocious as in BCMS/SC, Macedonian, Vietnamese to name three. The synthesizer for English still sounds off in varying degrees in everything but a word in isolation. When I set out to learn to speak a language, my models are native speakers (or failing that near-native ones). 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5784 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 27 of 34 10 March 2013 at 1:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Is there any way to download and save the audio you listen to on GT (e.g. for putting in
your srs software)? I hate computerized voices as well; but sometimes a human voice just isn't available. The Spanish voice is far less irritating than the ones you hear in some audiobooks (which I can't bear to listen to), the German one seems good too and the English one is amazing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 28 of 34 10 March 2013 at 10:11am | IP Logged | ||
Actually Google translate is part of the internet, and in my view it is as important a step in language learning as the internet courses - I had almost said 'as the invention of teachers'. However we have to distinguish three or four very different things: the speech synthesizer as it occurs with the source resp. with the translation AND translation L2 --> L1 versus L1 --> L2 (where L1 could be a second language and L2 actully a L8 or L27). The quality of the synthesizing varies wildly between languages, and in some cases it is scarcely bearable (and there you would of course have to search for a better synthesizer if you can't afford the services of a native human speaker). But there is one factor more: the reason for its use: I would only use a synthesizer if I needed to know how to pronounce a certain word or phrase. Using it to get a general idea about the pronunciation of a language is not logical when you can listen to better pronunciation in other sources, although with phrases you did't select yourself. The point is that I sometimes want to select the things that being read aloud myself, AND I want to listen to them again and again, maybe with minor alterations which I have chosen myself based on suspicions about the way the language functions. And even a course or podcast can't give me this last possibility. But because pronunciation is something that doesn't depend much on the theme you can mostly just as well use a podcast or other recording to study it .. provided that you know what is being said (and that's an important consideration) The free choice of texts is also the reason why I use the translator, and I'm a heavy user of that - but for study purposes only the direction L2 -> L1 is relevant. As most of us agree the translations are too errorridden to be taken at face value, and I would only ever use the direction L1 -> L2 if I wanted to get a good laugh. But for me the choice of texts is of paramount importance, and I simply can't get bilingual versions of most of the things I want to work with - like popular science stuff and history articles. Those who like to read literature can sometimes find their preferred works both in an original L2 version and in its L1 translation. But translations vary widely from almost literal to something so 'free' as to be close to a new work (the translation from Harry Potter II into Latin is among the good guys, whereas the junk translation I once saw from Latin into Italian of Satyricon was absolutely worthless). And having two physical books side by side isn't nearly as convenient as having parallel columns or interspersed/interlinear printouts. Of course you can get parallel editions of some newer works on the internet, but most parallel literary works on the internet are quite old due to copyright issues - and even though Hans Christian Andersen is a great author you wouldn't want to express yourself in his manner here in 2013. Basically a machine translation should only be used to assist you in making your own translation of a text. If you don't know your target language well enough to grasp how the main text is constructed then you can't see where the machine translation has gone awry. You must also be able to judge whether the machine translation makes sense, maybe with some leeway for lost negations and things like that. And sometimes you have to consult your dictionary because the translation simply sounds too fishy. But if somebody denies that a faulty translation can be useful then I must say from my own experience that it isn't so - in most cases my doubts and the involuntary jokes of the software don't coincide. Edited by Iversen on 10 March 2013 at 10:27am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4652 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 29 of 34 10 March 2013 at 12:26pm | IP Logged | ||
Iversen, what you say is true for longer texts. And what about single words? Are GT and similar sites useful?
Good question, I'd love to save Acapela's audio for my Arabic... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 30 of 34 10 March 2013 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Audacity can record the sounds your computer produces.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tea oolong Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4417 days ago 28 posts - 33 votes Studies: Korean* | Message 31 of 34 12 March 2013 at 5:22am | IP Logged | ||
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Are there any "language liaisons" to use? For example: instead of Japanese to English, why not try Japanese to Turkish to English, assuming Japanese and Turkish have grammar pattern similarities while Turkish and English may be a few common etymology relationships due to Latin/Greek influences. Just a thought. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ling Diglot Groupie Taiwan Joined 4587 days ago 61 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Indonesian, Thai | Message 32 of 34 12 March 2013 at 7:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Google Translate is especially poor when it comes to translating high-context languages
like Chinese into low-context languages like English. Much of the source text omits what is expected to be understood (even including the subjects of sentences). Chinese can also be tricky for machines to parse: 烘手機 ("hand dryer") has been translated as "bake the cell phone" by a machine translator; 國小時 ("when [I was] in elementary school") has been translated as "country hour". And from the standpoint of a machine, both "translations" are reasonable. Translate Chinese text into English (or even English into Chinese) using GT, and the results are almost always bizarre; nothing like a native speaker would say. GT is NOT the resource to use to learn a language (barring extremely short sentences or single words, and even then... for instance, in Thai I wrote "You're welcome, Bill", and GT translated it as "Bill, I not.") Edited by ling on 12 March 2013 at 7:33am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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