Translators confuse me
I am reading Spanishdict, another site, and using robots, I can't determine which is best because the robots give different answers. "Ella le escribe a Juan una carta". "Ella le escribe una carta a Juan". Are both okay?
4 Answers
Both are correct. The first emphasises una carta and the second emphasises a Juan.
I like SD because we are real people. I don't trust robots so much. Remember HAL? Maybe some of you don't. Also, because there are so many Latinos here from different countries, you get a more varied vocabulary.
Hello root,
Welcome to our Spanishdict community forum 
Both sentences are correct! Yes, that is possible!
The Spanish language allows for quite a lot of flexibility with regard to the word order (Grammatically referred to as 'syntax') so sentences can often be written in a number of ways, and the general meaning will remain the same but the emphasis will be slightly different! 
ex 1.Juan se levanta a las 7 (siete) de la mañana, todos los días = Juan gets up at seven o 'clock in the morning every day! Emphasis: Juan se levanta a las siete /Juan gets up at seven (o ' clock) etc....
ex 2.Todos los días Juan se levanta a las siete (7) de la mañana = Every day Juan gets up at seven o' clock in the morning. Emphasis: Todos los días = Every day etc..
Hopefully, with much time and much practice, as you and many others here develop your Spanish skills and confidence in reading, writing, understanding and speaking this beautiful language, you will become sufficiently proficient to know how to express your thoughts, ideas and feelings, and so you will become much less dependent on any form of mechanical or electronic translator!
In my view, based on my experience, these translators are next to useless when it comes to translating idioms and colloquial phrases that cannot be translated literally! As you can probably tell, I am not a great fan of them.They can help you out when you are a complete beginner, but they are a poor substitute for learning a foreign language properly!
I hope this helps
Corrijan mi español si es necesario, por favor
Machine translators, like most things, have strengths / advantages and weaknesses / disadvantages.
Strengths:
I you have some text in Spanish that you are struggling to understand by using a machine translator you can usually get a much better idea of the meaning.
I you want to write some Spanish, writing the Spanish in Google Translate and seeing what comes up in English can help you to avoid many mistakes such as using the wrong word in Spanish.
If you then compare what you have written in Spanish with how Google would do the translation from English and try to understand the differences you can learn a lot.
Fast and cheap.
Disadvantages:
Machine translators make mistakes, particularly if the sentence is complex or nuanced.
They won't always use the proper conjugation, mood or tense.
You often have to insert subject pronouns when writing in Spanish in order to get a good English translation even though the subject pronouns would probably be omitted in normal Spanish usage.
Even though a sentence may be understandable and even grammatically correct, many times it will not produce the way things are actually said in either language.
In summary, one has to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of machine translators when using them. I use them a lot and learn a lot by using them but asking for advice on SpanishDict is much better for getting advice on normal usage and proper grammar.
