Using on line translation tools
This is just my opinion, others may well disagree, but, for anything other than single word translations, I would stay well clear of on line translation tools.
As I said, for single words (especially nouns) they can be very useful. However, for sentences, phrases and other collections of words, they can actually do more harm than good. Some are better than others of course, but generally speaking a translation tool doesn't know context, mood, nuance of meaning etc etc. Therefore, they often produce results that are strange to say the least. For a beginner (as I know from experience) this can be very confusing. I tend to take as gospel what I read lol, but then later when I'm picking up more information, if things confilct, well that really throws me.
As you progress in your Spanish ability and know exactly what you are looking for - but just can't remember how to say it - perhaps then a translation tool can be more helpful. Obviously, you have more knowledge and can filter out the translations that you know are a load of rubbish! Personally though, I still stay well clear of them.
That's my two-penneth. What do you guys think about translation tools?
9 Answers
Billy:
Even if the translator is a 100% accurate, it wouldn't be a good learning tool.
Why?
I like to simile this to:
If you want to develop muscles you must lift the weights, for if you see someone else lifting them for you, who is going to develop those muscles, you or the other person?
BillyGoat, I agree 100%. I stay away from them like the plague.
Someone told me long ago not to use translators and that was the best advice they could have ever given me. I never even looked at translators at all until this past year, and I only did so because of other people (beginners) asking me about the "best" translator or trying to use Spanish they got out of a translator (which is almost always bad). A dictionary and online forums like this one and WordReference will triple your learning and give you more accurate results.
However, sometimes you find yourself in a bind and you have no choice, in which case you have to do what you have to do. Like you're in a foreign country and need help. But you really need to understand the limitations of translators and only use them when you have absolutely no choice. They are not great learning tools and in the end they cheat you of the learning opportunities that a good dictionary and online forums where you get answers from real people.
99% of the time I can spot Spanish that came out of a translator. The translations are at best unnatural and stiff, frequently flat out wrong, and simply cannot handle informal words and slang. But if you must use one, I recommend Google Translate.
I really agree with you Billy. I prefer my trusted Collins dictionary in paper form, but I freely admit that I use the translator when I'm in a hurry and I lack a word or two, or want to check if I'm using the right word. For a complicated sentence, I agree with you, one has to think alot, put it down, think some more...Then hope a corrector comes by!
However, my husband, who speaks relatively little Spanish yesterday asked me to check a letter to the police he had written with some help from an automatic translator, and it was surprisingly good. Possibly I have under-estimated my husband's knowledge or Spanish, or the translators are cleverer than I thought.
I think rodneyp was right on when he said "you really need to understand the limitations of translators." They are tools, but not perfect ones. I'm reading my Christmas gift now, "El viejo y el mar." I have to use the translators quite often. Sometimes, Google translate gets it wrong, and SD gets it right, sometimes the other way around. Sometimes it takes a bit more work. Once, I plugged in a single word to Google and SD and they both couldn't do it. When I typed in the whole sentence, Google gave me a good translation, including of the word. SD still didn't get the word.
It's similar to one aspect of my favorite hobby, fishing. I fish in the marshes of southeast Louisiana. If you zoom in on Google Maps to the "toe" of Louisiana, you'll see lots of little bayous and lakes and cuts and canals. It all looks the same, so it is easy to get lost if you don't know the area. I use a satellite chart to navigate and find my way, which is really difficult sometimes, especially the first time I've been to an area, but I can do it. A few years ago, I got as a gift a GPS device. Super cool, very easy. The map of the area shows up on the little screen. It makes it MUCH easier to find my way around. But, the GPS charts are not completely current, what with coastal erosion and the like. Sometimes I'm in the middle of a bayou and the GPS shows me on land about 20 yards to the side. Sometimes I go over water near an island that has eroded and partly disappeared, but the GPS shows me going over part of the island. With the GPS, I know exactly where I am, but it's not entirely accurate. It's simply one tool I use to find my way home.
Sorry for the lengthy post, but I haven't been fishing for a couple of months, so this was therapeutic.
I am enough of a beginner that I need to be wary of translators because often I don't know enough to realize when they're steering me wrong. However, I do resort to Google Translate, sometimes using it as a dictionary, sometimes having it translate to English as I compose my sentence in Spanish, and sometimes pasting in my completed Spanish sentence to see what kind of translation it gives me. I am getting to the point that I know at least some of the pitfalls and can correct for them. I've learned how to pull out certain words and phrases to get a better translation to plug back into a sentence under construction, when to take an idiomatic turn of phrase to wordreference.com, to inspect verb tenses and moods and pronouns VERY carefully and make my own decisions about those.
I also occasionally paste in something someone has posted only in Spanish that is too advanced for me to extract meaning from. Sometimes what I get looks pretty much like gibberish, but there's usually enough there to help me understand what I'm trying to read.
I find that the more Spanish I learn, the less often I use the translator. I guess that's to be expected. Relying on translators too heavily can drastically slow down the learning process. I still think there are ways to use them in conjunction with other tools and one's own developing feel for the language that enhances learning instead of detracting from it.
Translation features have their uses, but I would not trust one for anything important. I do not use them much, but every once in a while I find a use.
So where do I use them (as opposed to using the translation box here as a portal to the dictionary):
To put in Spanish if I have any doubts about the interpretation of what I am reading due to a particularly difficult sentence structure. I can pretty much read Spanish, although I might have to look up a word in the dictionary from time to time, so this is not that common. And I don’t trust it, it just gives me a thought that I may not considered to further evaluate my interpretation- and frequently enough I just reject it as wrong (note, I do not put in easy things). I do put other languages in it sometimes when I want to know what someone said, but I recognize that it may not be correct and I have no way of evaluating it.
From English to Spanish, to give me any ideas of a different way of wording things when I am not happy with what I came up with. If it stirs my memory to something I already know, then I use it (as a concept in my own words). If it is obviously wrong I ignore it. If it comes up with something that I don’t know, I investigate it thoroughly before using it, again wording it to fit my purpose- I only do this with short little fragments that I want to check out alternatives for- I would never put in a whole complicated sentence and expect anything out of it. And in this last case, I do learn from it, although it usually via a thread on Word Reference with native answers before I accept it as a correct manner of expressing the idea.
My family used to send me notes in Spanish, entirely translator generated. I would then explain to them what was wrong, what it really said, what I think they were trying to say based on my best guess of the English they put in to generate it, and how they really should have said it. It probably was a reasonable learning exercise for me. They got tired of it and just communicate with me in English now.
There are some great translator programs out there that you can load on your computer but they cost tons of money. They even have specialized ones for use by medical personnel, law enforcement and such like. I had a chance to use a legal translator to check my work on a legal document I had to write for a lawyer friend. It was a great help.
CAT tools (of which online translation tools form part) are still quite controversial today. As you noted, for a lot of languages it's easy to compile a database of nouns and the results you get are actually quite nice. But sentence structure is a lot more complicated and working out the actual meaning could be quite a difficult task. I cannot even begin to imagine the kind of algorithm that would be adequate for the job.
However, as other people pointed out, this doesn't mean that there aren't any advantages to be gained. It all depends on the purpose you have in mind. I know a lot of people who use Google translate to get the gist of e-mails in languages they don't speak. My mother uses Google for medical stuff because what she needs is to understand the connections between the "important" words and her own medical knowledge supplies the rest. From what I've seen it's working well for her. When I started learning Spanish I used to cross-check my sentences across all the three translators offered by SD, the very act of comparison helped me focus on the sensitive spots (ser/estar most of the time, heh).
Like any man-made thing, translation tools could be very useful but should be taken with a healthy pinch of salt.
There is no tool that is magic ,
but every tool has a use which makes the whole armoury magical.
So yes I believe it can be useful , just as each Spanish native speaker
is able to offer an opinion which may differ slightly form their colleagues
iving in a different Spanish speaking country or area. We must use everything
at our disposal , and not discount a thing which may or not be acceptable
to others for one reason or other.
As we progress so can we then discard that which is not useful or obsolete.
