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Google Translate to learn a language?

 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
30 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3


Fasulye
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fasulyespolyglotblog
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Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto
Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish
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 Message 25 of 30
31 December 2010 at 2:20pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
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).


I fully agree with this statement and therefore I wouldn't use Google Translate to translate into Danish or Turkish, because I couldn't detect all the mistakes the program makes. When Google translates into Dutch I know what's correct and what's nonsense.

Fasulye
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Whitefish
Diglot
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Canada
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49 posts - 72 votes 
Speaks: English*, French

 
 Message 26 of 30
31 December 2010 at 3:25pm | IP Logged 
Fasulye wrote:
Iversen wrote:
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).


I fully agree with this statement and therefore I wouldn't use Google Translate to translate into Danish or Turkish,
because I couldn't detect all the mistakes the program makes. When Google translates into Dutch I know what's
correct and what's nonsense.

Fasulye


Well, to back this up, here's two examples.

From

Quote:
夜,靜悄悄。一隻大老虎從洞裡跑出來找吃的 。


Google Translate gave this:

Quote:
Night, quiet. Ran out of a big tiger came from the cave to eat.


Which captures the essence of the sentence. I can now see what the sentence means and make sense of it in my
head. However, from this:

Quote:
大老虎很高興,哈,這下我有吃的啦!


Google Translate gave me

Quote:
Tigers are pleased, Kazakhstan, which I have to eat under it!


Which is clearly not the right translation.

Edited by Whitefish on 31 December 2010 at 3:26pm

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polyglHot
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Senior Member
Norway
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173 posts - 229 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish, Indonesian
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 27 of 30
13 January 2011 at 10:24pm | IP Logged 
Google translate is fed humaniod language and spits out computer generated junk. However
when used from English to your T.L with easy beginner level sentences it can be quite
useful and you will detect it's errors. You can also translate it back and fort a few
times, or translate only one word. I use it as a tool along with my course book,
dictionary and of course speaking IRL with Russians. Just remember not to trust this
robot completely!
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Darya0Khoshki
Triglot
Groupie
United States
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71 posts - 91 votes 
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Iraqi)
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 28 of 30
14 January 2011 at 2:34am | IP Logged 
I use Google translate as my Farsi dictionary, since I don't have one. As a dictionary, it's very helpful (but I still like to plug the word in in both English and Arabic to see get a second opinion for Farsi).

However, as many people have mentioned, it' grammar stinks! Maybe it's better for the more "popular" languages, but it can't conjugate verbs in Farsi at all.

I like to think of Google Translate as a fellow language learner who knows more than I do but isn't infallible. :-)
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tmp011007
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Congo
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Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: French, Portuguese

 
 Message 29 of 30
22 January 2011 at 5:13am | IP Logged 
even though google is faster I think babylon online is much better
http://translation.babylon.com/
1 person has voted this message useful



carlonove
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5978 days ago

145 posts - 253 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 30 of 30
22 January 2011 at 6:23pm | IP Logged 
I recently started using a new reading strategy based around GT. I'll take an ebook in my target language and convert it to HTML and adjust the font and the margins a bit. I have the firefox add-on Globefish installed, which instantly translates highlighted text into a little text bar at the bottom of the firefox window. I also use a program called X-Mouse Button Control to alter my mouse click commands. I've changed one of the button layers so that a left click automatically double clicks instead of single clicks, so that with one click on a word (or a click and drag on a phrase) in the ebook it'll highlight and translate the text instantly.

The downside is that I need to be both on a computer and online for all this to work, but I've managed to make longer novels "more comprehensible", and am no longer burdened by the time it takes to look up an unknown word or phrase.

Edited by carlonove on 27 January 2011 at 6:14pm



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