Google Translation- a warning Hello,Some of my students use google translate for their homework and are very surprised that I can realize that very quick. Google translate uses the word order of the o

Alex 알렉스

Professional Teacher

Google Translation- a warning

Hello,

Some of my students use google translate for their homework and are very surprised that I can realize that very quick. Google translate uses the word order of the original language in the to be translated language and there are typical translation mistakes. Moreover names are translated as well. As these translations are as well faulty regarding the grammar, you have to be careful.

Google translations are useful if you do not understand a certain text and want to know what it is about. Still there can be pitfalls: double negations or simple negations are sometimes translated wrong, that would give the text a complete different meaning. I usually tell my students not to use google translations.

Have fun

Alex

Aug 31, 2018 12:16 AM

Comments · 17

I'm learning Spanish and I find that Google Translate is most useful to me in reverse. I try to write Spanish and see if Google can translate it back to English. If there is even a slight mistake, Google Translate will give a crazy translation or no translation (for some reason, if it does not recognize a word as being Spanish, it just leaves it unchanged).

August 31, 2018

Grüß Dich, Alex.

You are so right! Google is merely a translation tool, not an actual translator. The funniest ones are when people misspell a word in their native language. For example, if one mixes up “they’re”, “there” and “their”, the resulting gobbledygook will be a dead giveaway. And yes, I will laugh ;)

August 31, 2018

Paulo: I agree, Google is indeed becoming surprisingly good at translating between Western European languages like English and Portuguese.

Dan Smith: Awesome idea of yours to take advantage of an apparent weakness — Google's getting thrown off by random mistakes — as a way of checking your work.

August 31, 2018

It is improving a lot. From Portuguese to English, sometimes, it is surprising how it can reorganize the word order, omit some idiomatic words of reinforcement, and so on.

August 31, 2018