Has anyone used Google Translate or any other online translator?
I had an interesting conversation today with a Brazilian Portuguese speaker. While I am planning to take an elementary Portuguese class in August, I think I can also teach myself the language.
That brings me to my question to all Italki users: Who has used Google Translate (or any other online translator)? I find that it is a very powerful tool, plus it is so intuitive that there seems to be a mutual learning process going on. What I mean is that the more I use it, the more proficient I become, and at the same time I almost get the feeling that the program is learning to converse with me. Weird.
Please let me know whether you have used this or another language program, and if so, what your impressions are.
Search from various English teachers...
Corrections · 6
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Hi van-step. Thanks for your tips. Your approach is very similar to mine. I find that when I open a session in Google Translate, my first attempts are erratic. But with minor corrections to the text and repeated attempts, the translated text becomes more accurate. It is far from perfect, but I have noticed that over time, the program is getting better. An added advantage for me is that it provides special characters that I don't have on my keyboard.
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Good Day! The best way of using the Google Translator is to make notes straight there. I'm a russian native speaker and I learn English. I open the Translator and start to write a phrase on English. There is my English text at the left part of the Translator's page. Also I can see a reaction of the Google at the right Russian side of the page. If it's reaction is bad, I do some corrections and enjoy.
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Thanks, Rawda. You helped me to see a comedic story in all this. Let your imagination run. I agree that Google translator is perfectly capable of returning disasterous results. I have been quite successful feeding it whole paragraphs, but sometimes you have to rearrange the text to improve results.
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Hi ..
Google translate is only good when you try to translate single words or simple phrases , you know such phrase as how it's going ? and etc ... otherwise it is a disaster. I tried before to translate some sentences of English poems to Arabic , but I ended up with funny and ridiculous results , but I don't deny it is a still a great tool of learning :) .
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Thanks, Henry. I agree that Google Translate can be erratic. But, I find that you can learn to exploit its strentghs. For example, feeding it smaller groups of words helps accuracy. In German, it helps to break up compound words before pasing them to the translator. I haven't tried Chinese, I mean, I haven't tried to learn it. I can imagine the frustration you feel with language translators. I will give lingoes a try.
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