I know it, you know it, everybody knows it. Using Google Translate too much is a bad idea, right?
Yet a lot of English learners tell me that they still use it!
Come to think of it, I use it too when I can't say something in Spanish. My question to you is, do you use it too?
So most times when we ask you what your biggest frustration in English is you tell us: I can't
speak. I forget words. My vocabulary is too small. When I speak I get lost. I can't form sentences.
I get it. You're still learning and, as such, you're going to encounter some obstacles in your way.
The thing is when you have those frustrations, what's the quickest
more practical and easiest solution that's just one touch of a button away?
Google Translate! It's okay to use it every now and then but if your goal is to learn English
that you can actually use to improve your life and connect to the world, you need to be careful
because you don't want to make yourself too dependent on Google Translate.
Google Translate is killing your fluency! If you're using it too often, if you find yourself always going back
to Google Translate, then watch this video before we get started. If you're new here and frustrated
with boring methods of learning English that just don't seem to work, you've come to the right place.
Each week we create lessons like this to help learners like you get comfortable using English
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In this video, I'll give you a few reasons why you shouldn't use google translate and what you can do
instead. At the end, I'll share with you an amazing way in which you can use Google search engine,
not Google Translate, that's going to grow your vocabulary in English. It's going to make you
better at learning and with just a few weeks of using it your overall fluency is going to improve
a lot so how does Google Translate work. The main reason why using Google Translate isn't a good
idea if you're trying to communicate in English is because it doesn't try to interpret the context of
each sentence. Instead the translations are solely based on statistical events.
Maths and odds. What this means is that it doesn't or even try to think like a human. It's more like
a robot trying to match a word with its meaning. In fact, the brain of this robot is an algorithm
called Statistical Machine Translation which breaks down each sentence into individual words
or phrases to find a match for their databases.
Google Translate has developed quite a bit over the years so more often than not it will recognize the appropriate option
when ambiguousness could rise. In Spanish "papa" means dad but it also means "potato" and "pope".
The only difference is that it's written without a stress mark. "Papa". If you run the phrase "bienvenido
papa" into Google Translate it will translate it to "welcome dad" and not "welcome potato". Wow! Such
incredible technology, right? However, what if you actually meant "welcome pope"? Well, that actually
led to a funny misunderstanding in real life when someone greeted Pope Francis in this way.
Now, if you sometimes feel lonely in your learning and you want to connect with other learners from
all around the world, I highly recommend you download our app, the RealLife English app.
With this you can connect with other learners from all around the world for short dynamic
conversations, as well as practice your listening by listening to our podcast,
in which you also receive a free transcript and all the vocabulary that you can learn.
The best part is you can download it right now for free in the Google Play or the Apple App Store.
Or you can just click up here or the link down in the description box below. What are you waiting for?
If you're someone who is learning English to improve your life and connect to the world, Google Translate is actually a problem if you
allow yourself to become heavily dependent on it. Google Translate can be a solution,
for example on the off chance that I needed to say "excuse me, where's the restroom" in German or
in Japanese. I'd get these results and maybe that would be enough for me to get an answer.
Although, me understanding the reply is a whole different problem, perhaps for another video. However, if
you're an English learner who wants to have real world fluency, you should get the needed skills to
not have to depend on Google Translate. One such skill is using "vocabulary chunks". I'll talk about
that in just a moment.
So one way in which you can use Google, the search engine not the translator, is by searching something you're planning to say or
write between quotation marks, and check whether people are using that phrase on the internet
or if google isn't getting many results with the phrase you thought of. I have to say, I think this
is more useful for intermediate and advanced learners. Here's an example. Just a moment ago
I used the adjective "dependent". If you're "dependent on something" you need that thing. Now, I want to
actually emphasize that and say "very dependent", but I don't want to use that word "very" because
it's a lazy emphasizer, so I'm going to think of a different word that could go with "dependent".
Could it be "greatly", or "highly", how about "heavily". I'm actually not sure and so
here's where I'm going to use Google search to see how other people are using that word.
So our search is "greatly dependent", and this is what I get. Look at the number of results
Here I can even take a peek at how it's used in this sentence: "The future of the nation is greatly
dependent on how many such people it contains". Okay, I'll now try the other option with "highly".
Wow it has way more results than with "greatly"! You can even go to the news section of this
search and look at some headlines. Let's now see what we get if we look for "heavily dependent".
We get 3.9 million results, this means you can use it too. So this teaches you that heavily and highly
are commonly used collocations with dependent. Greatly, on the other hand by comparison at least,
not so much. In addition to that you can clear up any doubts about which prepositions to use
if you're not sure whether to use "on" or "off" after "dependent".
Again, put it in Google between quotation marks and you can be the judge by looking at the results.
Of course, you can't and shouldn't use Google search when you're having a conversation in English.
When that's the case I'd say just be present and embrace mistakes as part of the process.
But if you're writing or planning what you'll say later, you can use Google in
this way and you'll find out for yourself how useful it can be.
I foreshadowed it earlier when I said that "word chunking" is a
skill that you can put to use when you speak or write so that you depend less on Google Translate.
Word chunks are a sequence of words that come naturally together to express an idea. For example,
"heavily dependent" is a chunk or as it's also known a collocation. So is when we say "it's raining
heavily", but if I say "I need something heavily", that's a false word chunk or collocation which
simply means if you use it it will sound unnatural and rather odd. Word chunks are incredibly useful
for learning new vocabulary. Think about the moment you first learned the phrase "nice to meet you".
You didn't study each word in the sentence, you simply learned them as a group.
Take as an example these different chunks with the word way. Collocations. Fixed expressions.
Formulaic utterances. Sentence starters. Verb patterns. Idioms and catchphrases.
You can use it but with discretion. There's no harm in using it
for occasional help but depending too much on it will result in you making mistakes. Don't take me
wrong, making mistakes is great, but making them because of Gogle Translate? Not so much.
There's a whole other reason why not to use it, and this is that it takes away the valuable opportunity
for you to try to figure out something about the language. Take that example where together
we explored the options and alternative words that went with "dependent". If you had simply put
that phrase in your native language into Google Translate you would have got the translation
"very dependent". And as I said, "very" is a lazy word and you would have missed the opportunity to explore
the collocations with "highly" and "heavily". You would have just got the easy answer and you would have
missed the chance to make an effort to figure out things about English. You learn by discovering, by
solving the mysteries of the language yourself. That's it for today's lesson. Congratulations for
making it until the end, it shows that you really want to learn. Now, continue your learning streak by
watching this other lesson where we share with you the secret to stop translating in your head and
ways to start thinking in English. Once you learn that you'll be able to speak much more fluently.