Thoughts on google translate?

[Jeff_Fontaine]

If used in a cautious way, Google Translate is a great tool, especially at the early stages of learning a language although not exclusively. It gives you instant translations which you can use to communicate with a native speaker of the language you want to learn. By communicating what you do is you practice the language and as many people say, practice is the best, most efficient way to learn a language.

Do not focus on what you translate into the language you are learning, since as we know, the translations from Google Translate might not be written correctly. You only use it this way temporarily since you may not yet know how to write something in the language you are learning.

Instead, focus on the way the native speaker you practice with is speaking, since he/she knows how to use the language, at least, most likely better than you. Use Google Translate to translate what he/she says to you, if you do not understand it. Google Translate might not give you a "correct" translation into your language, but that is not the point; all you need here is to understand what he/she is saying and along with the context, you should be able to do that. If you do understand, then you are creating a link in your mind between the two languages and thus, you are learning the language. For more details on how to use Google Translate: check out http://www.learnlanguagesonyourown.com/ ... guage.html

[Iversen]

I would say: don't even use Google translate temporarily from your L1 into a weak L2 - if you don't yet know how to write something in the language you are learning then you haven't got any chance of spotting its errors. You learn more from making your own mistakes (and maybe write slightly less).

Luckily there is an alternative, namely doing retranslations. There are two kinds. Luca Lampariello advocates doing them with fairly long intervals before the retranslation, whereas I have used them with very short intervals, doing one or two sentences at a time in both directions (L2 -> L1 -> L2) and then proceeding to the next passage. My idea behind this has been that when I write the last translation (into my L2) then I still remember the original version, and then it almost feels like I had invented it myself.

[Brun Ugle]

When it comes to language learning, I mostly use Google translate to check things I've written myself before posting them to Lang-8, Italki, etc. I know it won't guarantee perfection, but it finds a lot of the really obvious and stupid mistakes like spelling errors or using a completely wrong word, and getting rid of those means I will probably get more useful help from the native speakers that correct it. Also I learn a lot by this method of finding mistake myself.

When I put a text I've written though google translate, what comes out the other side usually has some weird bits. I then check those bits carefully to see if I can find out why it didn't return what I expected. Sometimes, I can see where I made an error and fix it. Other times, I can't find anything wrong with what I wrote, which means it's either a translator error and I was actually right, or that my skills aren't advanced enough to find the mistake myself, in which case I will get feedback when I post it. Sometimes it might come out perfect in English even though the original was wrong, but the natives tell me about those errors too.

Generally, I find Google translate a very useful tool, but I think this method probably works better for relatively elementary texts. If you are advanced enough to be flowery and poetic, you're probably just going to get gibberish in return even if what you wrote is perfect. But then again, you probably don't need Google translate anymore at that stage either. Also, it probably works best with languages that are more closely related to English.

[Chilled]

I think for single word translation it works fine, also to get the gist of what's going on in a sentence , it helps too.

[arthaey]

When it comes to language learning, I mostly use Google translate to check things I've written myself before posting them to Lang-8, Italki, etc. I know it won't guarantee perfection, but it finds a lot of the really obvious and stupid mistakes like spelling errors or using a completely wrong word

This is exactly what I use Google Translate for, when I'm not feeling lazy/on my phone.