Google Translate "Doesn't Work"
hi there Steve Kaufman here today I'm
gonna talk about Google Translate before
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Google Translate I hear all the time
Google Translate is no good it's not
accurate it's this and that I think
Google Translate is a tremendous
resource for language learners not only
for language learners because if I get a
text in a language that I don't
understand then I can quickly put it
into Google Translate and get a sense of
what the meaning is something in Finnish
or in you know Hungarian or whatever it
might be it's not a hundred percent and
it's better for some languages than
others but I find it extremely useful
second of all Google Translate is an
excellent dictionary it normally gives
you a lot of information about the word
some synonyms the pronunciation
text-to-speech
so it's a very good dictionary and quite
accurate this depends on the language it
doesn't work as well in Korean let's say
as in German or Russian but by-and-large
is a very good dictionary and not only
does it do words it does phrases and
that's very useful because often if I'm
working at link and I look up some
individual words and I don't have a good
sense of the meaning of these words in
combination I can highlight the phrase
put it into Google Translate which is
done we're connected to it and I can see
the meaning not only that you can also
work the other way with phrases so that
if I wanted to say like how do you say
you know as a test I try to tell in
other words there's a phrase how do we
say that in check there it is any me
slowly so you can very quickly if you're
if you want to improve your language
level by having some handy phrases like
in other words or in my opinion or by
the way then you just put it into Google
Translate and you get that phrase so
that's its function
a dictionary it also helps me when I
have to write in a language which uses
an alphabet other than the Latin
alphabet so for me to write in Russian I
can do it but I just it's much faster
free to simply type quickly in English
translate it into Russian I can go into
the Russian and fix up those parts that
are not correct and voila
my Russian text if I have to comment on
a forum or or something of that nature
and it also ensures that my spelling is
correct now it works better for some
languages than others it doesn't work so
well for Asian languages but it works
very well for European languages in my
experience so and one other last thing I
would say is that I find it very useful
sometimes if I want to focus on a
particular area of a vocabulary let's
say having to do with forestry or
something then I can plunk in a text in
English on one side that Google
Translate translate it into Russian or
Chinese or whatever language and then I
can import that into link and I study
saving words and phrases now over all
the text that Google Translate produces
is somewhat unnatural and has errors but
in terms of acquiring the vocabulary I
find it tremendously useful so to me
Google Translate is not going to replace
translators that are required for legal
work or for business documents but it
does facilitate people working across
different languages it makes it easier
for us to learn languages and I don't
see that it'll replace the need for
learning languages I can't see myself if
I'm in a foreign country if I'm in China
or in Brazil and I want to cook
communicate with locals I'm not gonna do
it through some device that translates
it back and forth I want to speak to
local language learning about the
culture learn about the history and so
forth so Google Translate is a
tremendous boon it's one of the many
sort of technological advances that are
have made language learning so much
easier today than it ever was thank you
for listening bye for now
you
