Advanced/native speaker opinion on Google Translate

[R3belD0gg]

I've been using the Google Translator a bit lately, mostly just to check and see if something I want to say is correct or how changing part of a sentence could change it's meaning (like swapping wa for ga, etc...)

It's also been kind of useful when I get a sentence that I feel like I should understand, but I don't. Like I know the words that are being said, but the sentence doesn't make sense to me yet for one reason or another.

That said, I get the feeling, even with my very limited understanding of Japanese, that the translator is surprisingly inaccurate at times. You can click words in the translation box for other suggestions but, still... Also, it gives a fairly literal translation sometimes, then at other times seems to take liberties with what I've written (or tried to write.)

Anyway, I'm wondering if maybe I should use it a little less? Could it, in the end, be bad for learning since it may give you a bad translation and confuse you? Especially when trying to construct my own sentences, it seems to either attempt to correct my bad Japanese or just takes liberties with the translation a bit. I'm hoping someone with a firm grasp on the language can gauge how useful a tool it really is.

[Tracel]

Hi R3belD0gg,

I use Google translate only as a last resort really. It is good for translating only single words or very short phrases.　As soon as you get more complicated or you have anything idiomatic in either language you risk the translation being completely wrong.　If there is a really long Japanese passage, let's say an article, and I don't have time to 'read' it, then I sometimes copy and paste the passage into Google translate. The result sometimes gives me the gist of the meaning to see if I want to put the time into it or not. If it is important, however, I never trust Google translate to give me accurate information.

I don't think it can hurt to use it sometimes, but I don't think I would use it as a study tool. If you have an i-phone then you are laughing, because it has so many cool apps for Japanese learning that you really don't need to use GT. But you mentioned the Firefox app, rikaichan, in another post, and I think this may be way better for actually learning Japanese.

トラ

[R3belD0gg]

Yeah, I was thinking I should probably stop using it as much. It seemed really useful at first when it occurred to me to use it, but after a while I started noticing the flaws. Seemed great on my phone because I could speak the Japanese into it, but I was never sure if it was misunderstanding me because of my pronunciation or not. My iPhone has trouble with my accent in English a lot of the time, lol. (Southern Louisiana, USA)

Maybe I'll look around online and see if there is anything better out there, though I doubt it. Still, it may be handy for when I have a sentence I can't understand the structure of, though it does nothing to explain what I'm missing. :/

[Tracel]

Yeah, I was thinking I should probably stop using it as much. It seemed really useful at first when it occurred to me to use it, but after a while I started noticing the flaws. Seemed great on my phone because I could speak the Japanese into it, but I was never sure if it was misunderstanding me because of my pronunciation or not. My iPhone has trouble with my accent in English a lot of the time, lol. (Southern Louisiana, USA)

Maybe I'll look around online and see if there is anything better out there, though I doubt it. Still, it may be handy for when I have a sentence I can't understand the structure of, though it does nothing to explain what I'm missing. :/

That is funny. It reminds me of a few years ago, when I still translated from Japanese to English. I was asked to translate a patent from J to E, and I found a translation app online to do just that. My first thought was that "I have become useless, and the computer can do my job completely ." Then I actually read the translation. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. It was so terrible that it was faster for me to translate it completely on my own without using the translation interface. It was that bad. Idioms, accents, dialects all confuse the translation interface. They keep trying to come up with the universal translator of 'Star Trek', but no one has gotten it yet. You can still use it as a tool, but until someone has taught a machine to actually parse a proper sentence, the human will still be a necessary evil.

とら

[community.japanese]

R3belD0gg-san, トラsan,
kon'nichiwa

I myself use Google Translate when I want to know what somethings says in a language I have no idea about
For example, when some of my friends write on facebook in the language I don't speak.
I think this is the best they can offer: "not for study, not for real translation; just to get an idea if ever possible."

I definitely don't recommend any of learners to refer to Google Translation for study reasons.
Google Translation cannot give you the correct use of "wa" or "ga" and maybe it gives you a wrong answer when
you actually wrote a 100% correct sentence.

So, R3belD0gg-san, if you have question about Japanese, please feel free to ask us.
If you write in forum, I'm sure there'll be some of your kind fellow colleagues (J-Pod listeners) will also
help you and we, J-Pod team, will also be there happy to help you with proper explanation (unlike Google Translate).
The very last thing any Japanese teacher would appreciate is that learners get wrong information
and learn from auto translation like Google Translation. It happened to me already and I was sad especially
because those learners actually knew better about Japanese and was making progress properly until
they started "learning" from Google Translation. They started being confused about particles, using incorrect
expressions and so on all because of bad influence of technology.

Because of the very unique grammar and syntax of Japanese language, none of those auto translation
works properly. It'd take another 100 years if they want to create a perfect software anyway.
Like I wrote at the beginning, I myself use it for certain reasons; I'm not denying those softwares.
I'm just 100% against the use for study purpose.

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[R3belD0gg]

Thanks, 奈津子さん。 I've kind of shied away from Google Translate a bit. I still use it when, after translating a line and figuring out the kanji or unknown conjugations, I still don't understand what I'm reading or am just unsure. That said, I won't rely on it to teach me anything. I've been kind of trying to do things that are a bit above my knowledge level just to keep myself engaged. Google Translate is helpful with things like 星が輝く黒い空に手を伸ばしてみる, which it translated as "I try to reach out to the black sky ablaze with stars." I was confused by みる until I saw the translation and checked Google, then learning about the -te miru structure (to try to ____. To SEE (miru!) if ____) Also, it's translation was better than my "I stretch my hands out to the shining stars in the black sky." And I just conveniently ignored みる。

So, R3belD0gg-san, if you have question about Japanese, please feel free to ask us.
If you write in forum, I'm sure there'll be some of your kind fellow colleagues (J-Pod listeners) will also
help you and we, J-Pod team, will also be there happy to help you with proper explanation (unlike Google Translate).

This forum has been super helpful so far. And not a single person I've seen has been rude or nasty, which is hard to say about the rest of the internet. I plan on posting a bunch more questions. Hopefully some other newbies will be reading what's posted and get some benefit from it as well.

[community.japanese]

R3belD0gg-san,
that's brilliant that you can actually use Google Translate to actually learn something correct (like ～みる)
Te-form does have many different meanings and functions, so it's totally understandable that you might need
some time to get the meaning immediately every time it appears. Also, みる can be confusing for the same reason
and now combining both of them....

This forum has been super helpful so far. And not a single person I've seen has been rude or nasty, which is hard to say about the rest of the internet. I plan on posting a bunch more questions. Hopefully some other newbies will be reading what's posted and get some benefit from it as well.

I'm sure there will be a lot of people who appreciate your posts!

J-Pod community is really a wonderful space with loads of kind people.
We, J-Pod team, don't tolerate abuse or sabotage friendly study space. Hope you'll keep enjoying on our
website while learning efficienctly!

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com