Need an opinion

[jj0304957076]

I was doing some searching earlier on Google Play and saw this English to Japanese translator. I tried it out and it apparently worked well for individual words and phrases. Does anyone reccommend using those apps for secondary studying? In the beginner lessons they explain
how to start a conversation in Japanese right?

[bradeatspie8566]

In my studying I only every use translators when I want to check if a sentence I just made up makes sense, when I want to look up a word, or when I don't know the reading for Kanji (be it the kanji itself or a word of kanji).

Sometimes I don't like E=>J translators because they go VERY EXACT on what you type in English, like for example if you wanted to say something like, "Would you like to go to the store?" (and I'm just going off of google translate here) it gives me　あなたが店に行くしたいと思いますか？
あなたがみせにいくしたいとおもいますか？
When like I would just be like omit the あなた completely and casually say
(Insert store name here) へ行きませんか？
I'm not sure if I'm being totally correct but I'm pretty sure that if you ask someone in the negative terms it is taken as "wouldn't you like to."
So in my opinion, it's good for if you use it for the ways I did up at the top and not to translate a full on sentence, because sometimes depending on the situation thing will end up being completely omitted (unless you're one of those people that does something like say "私はわたしは" in every given chance.

[thegooseking]

jj-san, bradeatspie-san,

As bradeatspie-san says, translators can be a little over-literal. When you first start learning Japanese, you're taught that the sentence structure is "subject - object - verb". In actual fact, the Japanese sentence structure is just "verb", and everything else is more or less optional. You generally only include them if they can't be implicitly understood. Machines aren't very good at implicit understanding, so will slavishly translate the English subject and object, which are necessary in an English sentence, but might not be in a Japanese sentence.

Machines also aren't very good at understanding the meaning of a sentence, which might affect the translation. Think about the English joke: "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." If you translate that into Japanese, both 'flies' and 'like' would be translated differently in either sentence - in the former sentence, 'flies' is the verb and 'like' is a comparator ("similar to"), while in the latter sentence, 'flies' is a noun and 'like' is a verb ("enjoy"). It's very difficult to get machines to figure out which one is intended, and the current technology just can't do it.

On top of this, one of the biggest challenges of Japanese is pitching your sentence at a socially appropriate level of politeness, which might involve different grammar. Now, my university department is doing a lot of work in trying to get machines to understand social appropriateness, but it's a long, long way off, so again, current technology can't really cope. You'll tend to find that machine translators will give you the plain, informal Japanese regardless of context.

All that said, I use machine translation a lot. I don't use it so much for translating words and phrases from English into Japanese (I just find a dictionary more reliable for that), but I do use it when I'm writing Japanese, to translate what I'm writing into English. It's not foolproof (it will sometimes understand incorrect Japanese, and will sometimes fail to understand correct Japanese), but if the translator spits out nonsense, that is a cue for me to go back and double-check my Japanese.

Regards,
小狼

[community.japanese]

jj-san, brad-san, 子狼san,
kon'nichiwa!

Think about the English joke: "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

Good one!

Any auto translator or machine translator work based on vast memory and database with grammar rules.
However, when basic syntax is completely different (like English and Japanese), the result is utterly miserable.
Using such tools just to get some idea would be okay, but using it to communicate would not probably end
up good or helpful. Just like Brad-san wrote, machine translator cannot even give you the correct
expression in Japanese for "want to go" (いきたい).

Instead of using such app knowing that the result you get is no better than rubbish,
why don't you use webpages like "yahoo answers"? It might take some time to get answers
and also there's a possibilities you might not get the answers, but the result(s) you get
would be much better than those machine things.

As to starting conversations, yes, you can learn it with our lessons.
You can also practice making sentences here and/or ask us if it's okay to start with certain sentences
(or maybe how to say properly...).

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[jj0304957076]

Arigato Gozaimasu, I have one sentence I need help with. How would you say "You are very beautiful" to a girl in Japanese?

[charliegchen8215]

Arigato Gozaimasu, I have one sentence I need help with. How would you say "You are very beautiful" to a girl in Japanese?

XXXさんはとても綺麗です。
xxx San wa totemo kirei desu.

Yes auto translators are pretty bad but they are extra miserable for Japanese. You will actually go backwards if you use a translator. Avoid at all cost. Use this forum.

[community.japanese]

jj0304957076-san, charliegchen8215-san,

XXXさんはとても綺麗です。
xxx San wa totemo kirei desu.

Thank you very much for the perfect answer!

and....

Yes auto translators are pretty bad but they are extra miserable for Japanese. You will actually go backwards if you use a translator. Avoid at all cost. Use this forum.

"extra miserable" I just loved how you put it and burst into laughter. Spot on!
I always had to explain far longer than that to say the same thing, with some logic details.
I think I should use your sentence from now on Thanks!

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

[andycarmenjapanese8100]

jj0304957076-san, charliegchen8215-san,

XXXさんはとても綺麗です。
xxx San wa totemo kirei desu.

Thank you very much for the perfect answer!

and....

Yes auto translators are pretty bad but they are extra miserable for Japanese. You will actually go backwards if you use a translator. Avoid at all cost. Use this forum.

"extra miserable" I just loved how you put it and burst into laughter. Spot on!
I always had to explain far longer than that to say the same thing, with some logic details.
I think I should use your sentence from now on Thanks!

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com

This was your thousandth post, Natsuko-sensei. Congratulations!

[community.japanese]

Andy-san,
[quote="andycarmenjapanese8100]
This was your thousandth post, Natsuko-sensei. Congratulations! [/quote]
Really!?!?
Thank you!!
How did you even know that? I never thought there was a way to count my posts
This is worth celebration....

Natsuko (奈津子),
Team JapanesePod101.com