I google translate accurate?
Should I use google translate if I don't know a word?
3 Answers
For simple things the translators are sometimes accurate. For complex things essentially never.
For a single word it might work. Sometimes.
Keep in mind words in both languages have multiple meanings and senses, and sometimes they overlap, and sometimes not. So you might pick a word that is the same in Spanish, for an entirely different meaning/sense of the word than the one you were trying for.
The best bet is to look a given word up in an English-Spanish dictionary, try to pick the equivalent that seems to have the best match to the meaning you want, then look that word up and see if it back translates to the sense you want.
For things that have a Wiki entry, where I can truly verify it is what I am thinking of, switching between the English and Spanish version helps.
If you want to trust the grammar of a translator, just take a complex Spanish sentence, put it in, look at the English that comes out, and you can get a sense of how bad the Spanish that comes out of those things looks to a Spanish speaker.
I love your answers but I want to put in my two centavitos' worth.
Sometimes these things work perfectly, but then again, if you put in longer phrases or sentences it come up with something like what a first semester Spanish student would write. Sometimes it's quite funny. just try it.
As Bosquederoble has already written an excellent suggestion, no further answers are necessary. However, I would still like to share my excellent strategy for using the translator:
- Type word into translator.
- Read the result.
- Post the exact opposite of what the translator suggested.
This method has never failed me!
