Machine Translation Accuracy

Question

I am drilling ser/estar usage and trying to use the DOCTOR & PLACE method to help me understand when to use one or the other. I find that both SpanishDict and Google Translate seem to translate randomly, not in accordance with these rules. The same seems to be true when the translation programs choose between imperfecto and preterito. Are the DOCTOR and PLACE rules bogus, or is it too difficult for the machine translators to do accurately?

Welcome to the forum. The rules are correct. Never trust any translator. - rac1, Sep 21, 2014

:) - ian-hill, Sep 21, 2014

Answer 1

Several points:

1. machine translators are notoriously inaccurate, especially with more slangy or more complex things. They can do okay with simpler things. If you want to test it, put something complex in Spanish in one and look at the English drivel that comes out. Or just take something more complex in English, put it in, take the Spanish, feed it back in, and look at the English you get back- do that back and forth a couple of times.

2. Strict adherence to rules will never get you to how a language is actually used by the people who speak it. They are an approximation that help you sort things as you learn them.

3. Complex acronym based rules are useful in training your instincts initially, but are useless in speaking in real time- you need to develop an instinct.

4. The ser vs. estar rule I like to use is very simple- how you characterize something= ser, and the state something is in= estar. With that you only have to learn what a native Spanish speaker thinks characterizes something, and what just describes it state. Because it doesn't matter what you think is a characteristic, only what a native Spanish speaker thinks. If you are going to get it right.

So for example a Spanish speaker doesn't characterize something by its location, with one exception. One could argue that Paris would not be Paris if it were not in France, but I suppose if it were moved a few miles down the road it might still be. But you use ser for the location of an event- a party at your friends house, because it wouldn't be your friends party if it was somewhere else.

Or you define the sky as blue- el cielo es azul. If today it happens to be gray, that is only a condition- El cielo está gris hoy.

So bottom line- no rule is perfect, your best bet is to internalize how native speakers actually use the language, with rules just as a general guideline.

:) - ian-hill, Sep 21, 2014