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Google Translate to learn a language? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5641 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 17 of 30 29 March 2010 at 4:20am | IP Logged |
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I use Google translate for the lols. I'll type something in Korean, and unless it's a real simple sentence, the translation is pretty off.
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| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5527 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 18 of 30 29 March 2010 at 7:43pm | IP Logged |
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Yeah, complex sentences are definitely out. Short phrases can be ok, but even then it makes some odd suggestions at times.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6695 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 19 of 30 29 March 2010 at 10:33pm | IP Logged |
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It is evident that there are many silly errors in the translations from Goggle and its competitors, but as long as you use them from a weak target language to English or your native language it doesn't matter as much as some of you think. The idea should not be to tell you the meaning of the original text, but to support your own reading of the text by offering hints and confirmation on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. The errors are mostly so gross that you can spot them in a language you know well (which is why you shouldn't trust it in the other direction). In contrast the details of literary translations may be just as far from the original, but the sneaky translator has hidden his 'poetic licence' in impeccably slick language.
Right now I'm reading Satyricon by Petronius in a bilingual Latin-Italian edition, but I have stopped using the Italian translation because I noticed that I spent more time trying to find the connection between the translation and the original than I did on understanding the Latin text. I have sometimes been baffled by the absurdity of Goggle translations (especially with distant language pairs or 'rare' languages), but I have never had the same uneasy feeling of being deliberately misled as I have with literary translations. Edited by Iversen on 29 March 2010 at 10:35pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6134 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 21 of 30 22 November 2010 at 10:03pm | IP Logged |
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And this, children, is why we do not rely solely on Google Translator, or on any machine translation for that matter:
"Translation: No, I read a good year in 1956, Renewable." ^^ It made sense 56 translations ago, I swear. http://www.conveythis.com/translation.php Edited by ellasevia on 22 November 2010 at 10:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| rolf Senior Member United Kingdom improvingmydutch.blo Joined 5999 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch | Message 22 of 30 29 December 2010 at 11:23pm | IP Logged |
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I use Google Translate to read Dutch newspapers.
I can understand most of the Dutch text already. If there is a word I don't know, I simply hover the mouse over and get the English. This is _much_ quicker than looking up in a dictionary. The translation doesn't have to be perfect anyway, as Iversen says. It's not like I'm going to pick up bad English because of the poor Dutch to English translation :D 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5839 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 23 of 30 30 December 2010 at 8:43pm | IP Logged |
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I sometimes use Google Translate to create bilingual texts Danish / Dutch or Turkish / Dutch, so that I have my target language L3 translated into my L2 Dutch. So that's L3 via L2 learning by using biligual texts. Google provides me with a rough translation and that's all I need to understand the main points of the text in one of my target languages. For what I want to achieve with this method a higher quality of translation is not necessary because I will use my bilingual dictionary to look up the unknown Danish or Turkish words in detail.
Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5122 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 24 of 30 30 December 2010 at 8:55pm | IP Logged |
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I don't directly use Google Translate anymore. Since I use Firefox as my browser, I've been using FoxLingo. It uses many different online translators, not just Google. It does other stuff too, such as highlighting and rudimentary grammar checking.
R. == 1 person has voted this message useful |
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