GOOGLE TRANSLATE by Gabriel Pacheco

Learning with google translate

By: Gabriel Pacheco

Google Translate

Is a service developed by Google in 2006, to translate texts, documents and websites from one language into another.Its accuracy has been criticized and ridiculed on several occasions. When used to translate single words, it's highly inaccurate because it must guess between polysemic words (the capacity for a word to have multiple meanings).

Tips for language training with google translator

1. Write and revise:Write short texts in the language you want to practice and then use Google Translate to translate it into Portuguese. This will help you find grammatical and even concordance errors if you notice that the translation doesn't have the meaning you wanted when writing the text.

Tips for language training with google translator

2. Pronunciation:One of the biggest difficulties with learning a language is pronunciation. Google Translate has a feature that transforms texts into audio, which can solve your doubts about how certain words should be spoken.

Tips for language training with google translator

3. Dictionary:Google Translate can also function as a dictionary. Write a word in the language you want to learn, click translate and see its grammar classification, the different meanings and synonyms it has.

Using the Google Translate app to practice your speaking

• all you need to do is setting the app to translate from english to portuguese, press the microphone button and pronounce a word or phrase.
• if the same word or phrase appears on the screen, your pronunciation is understandable!

Google Translator also shows synonyms of the word you are looking for. This will help to gain vocabulary.

ACTIVITIES

01) Write in potuguese a two-paragraph review of a movie or book you recently watched/read. Then type the review word by word in the Google Translate, turning it into english. 02) Choose a short poem in portuguese and then translate it to english, searching word for word on Google Translate. After that, write the entire poem on Google Translate. Note the differences between the two translations. Which is the most grammatically correct? Are there any concordance errors?

In conclusion... although Google Translate is not perfect, when being used the correct way can be very helpful for a student who is starting to learn a new language.

Thank you!