Even though the machine translator may not be accurate, will it most times be understood?
I understand the machine translator may not be totally accurate. If one uses it, will it most times be understood?
8 Answers
You can to be sure to expect some problems to translate use. If like this, perhaps you shall like the page translator to make it. Much so better to learn properly language, no?
Let me give you a definite answer:
If you can replace your words in English with synonyms, and everything still makes some sort of sense, the Spanish translation is quite likely to succeed. If using synonyms gives you crap, then you are likely to get crap in Spanish. Examples:
Get on with it
Synonyms of "get":
Access on with it
Acquire on with it
Capture on with it.
Fetch on with it.
Gain on with it.
Obtain on with it.
Another example:
Did you have a good time?
Did you acquire a good time?
Did you fetch a good time?
Did you hold a good time?
Did you obtain a good time?
Did you procure a good time?
It depends. The longer the message, the more of the gist of it that the translator will be able to convey. If only one or two sentences it can be totally misleading.
If you use it as a starting point and make corrections that even a beginner would know, it can usually get across the main points of a conversation.
If you are asking if it is a viable alternative to learning the language, then no. Using it will only cause misunderstandings.
Ian made a great point:
Always be very careful how you structure the original sentence to be translated.
If you phrase your English in the simplest, declarative style, avoiding idiomatic expressions, the translators are usually good. It takes some practice to refrain from writing idiom-free English, however. As Lazarus pointed out, some words have so many meanings which you don't consciously consider when speaking or writing, that context becomes highly important to translation. "Get" is one of the best examples of this.
The best use I can think of is for personal websurfing. You come across a web page you think may be of interest to you but it is not in your language, paste it into the Google translator and have it translate it into English for you.
Do that a few times, and you will soon see what a mess it makes translating from, say, German, to English, and you'll then know what a mess it is making out of your English when you translate it into some other language. But it may help you get a general (and very rough) idea of what a particular web page is about.
The three translators we have access to can at times all produce the same result.
This means that they could all be correct or all wrong - so don't trust them 100%.
However to get the general idea all 3 are useful.
Some sentence structures seem to work out better in one of the three than the other two.
Another trick is to use the Google one to translate into another language that you know well and see what happens.
If that works out well try then translating the result into the English or the Spanish translation you are looking for.
Always be very careful how you structure the original sentence to be translated.
The translator is most useful ( for me) when reading in spanish, as a short phrase doesn't make it angry.
It is not very useful in creating sentences or phrases in my opinion only because so many times our word order is different.
If you are restricting yourself to Spanish, I agree with the above.
However, if you attempt to use it for other languages which do not resemble English, you will more often than not end up with completely unintelligible translations.
