Thanks, Ilonka ; I do the same, it speeds up the process as long as the corrections phase isn't too difficult.
Lawrence - phrases and sentences - that's where it can get unreliable ; it's useful for individual words.
Alan, I see what you mean about using it to translate an 'unverified' script in to English. I, too, use it when speaking online, if I need a quick fix, and I know that my language partner will correct a mistake. [ I put this under Italian because the example I give is in that language, but of course it applies generally.]
Aliph - possibly it's used more for translations to and from English, and therefore 'learns' more.
Diana - I think it's quite useful for words, but you have to make comparison with synonyms to make sure you're correct. By highlighting a word, you can get a list of these synonyms and their comparative frequency of use.
Antony - I've used it for Chinese with interesting results !
Thank you all for your comments.
Google translate has improved amazingly during 2017 but only for direct translations to and from English!
For instance, if you translate from English to Arabic it’s ok. Do not try from Italian or French to Arabic, it is less accurate. The same thing happens with Bing who in 2016 was better then Google but now lost his advantages.
I think you're being a bit harsh on yourself - shortcuts aren't "lazy", they're efficient!
I use it as a proofreading tool. When I write something in my target language I'll paste it into Google and translate it into English. If it comes out with something coherent I've probably written it well. If it comes out with word salad I've probably messed up somewhere.
Another useful use of Google Translate is when I'm chatting online in my target language. If my language partner sends me a message that's too difficult for me to understand, I'll put it into Google Translate. Of course, looking up each word individually would be more beneficial, but would bore my partner to death with waiting.
Overall, I think Google Translate does an eerily good (though obviously far from flawless) job of translating between European languages, catching a lot of nuances you wouldn't expect from machine translation. Its Chinese-English translations have improved enormously over the years, but are still rather stilted. Much less impressive is the translations from languages with smaller bilingual corpora. I have a Pakistani friend to whom I send Google Translated messages in Urdu just for fun, and it messes up even basic sentences like "Do you want to have dinner together tonight?"
(sorry, I just noticed now this was posted in the Italian forum!)
