world language teachers of ONTD?maynardsongJune 30 2016, 00:16:02 UTC
How do you discourage kids from using Google Translate? How do you get them to use notes and the textbook? How do you get them away from trying to do things word for word?
Re: world language teachers of ONTD?koushibaJune 30 2016, 00:59:01 UTC
I'm not a teacher at all but damn, I had no idea kids used gt for school. I always used my textbook unless I wanted to use a word I didn't know that wasn't in my book.
Idk, maybe do some kind of in class activity to show how much it fails? Like google translate telephone or something? Or just more work on in class translation to get students used to doing that kind of work? Like maybe walking then thorough how you translated a passage step by step (looking at multiple word meanings, figuring out the grammar, and so on)?
I think some students will always turn to the computer, but maybe practice and confidence building can help for others? Honestly, tho, it's such a challenge!
Re: world language teachers of ONTD?anguiselJune 30 2016, 03:35:53 UTC
If you are grading papers, honestly make an example. State before you are giving back papers that you want to show them something. Take the question that was GT and put it on the board. Say 'the correct translation should be this' and write it out on the board. Then say 'HOWEVER google translate will give you this as an answer' and explain why it is wrong.
At the end of it all, pop down that if they just think they can use a faulty program to breeze through a lesson, they should rethink taking the class and that if they think a boss or someone whose language it is will give them a pass, they have a cold day in hell waiting for them.
For me, a person using Google Translate to actually communicate in a professional context would just scream "unprofessional and uneducated". In my experience, people who think it's any good tend to be monolingual and totally unaware that you can't translate between languages word for word, so that they aren't even considering the fact that machines might produce gibberish in their target language.
This. Google Translate is sexist, racist, and ageist, anyway. What I mean by this is that when you do Spanish, it ALWAYS defaults to the formal you and it uses expressions from Spain and all its adjectives are masculine. Except for ones dealing with beauty, which somehow were always in the feminine form.
Ah, that's interesting - hadn't looked into it that far for my own language. Mostly, it's just the gibberish that annoys me, or when people in a language learning forum go "oh, my book said this translates to that, but Google Translate gave me [random nonsense]" because they've been conditioned to think Google Translate is infallible and should overrule dictionaries or grammar books.
Sometimes when I need to look up an English expression in dictionaries, I do a Google Translate comparison for fun. This is what it gave me when I looked up the expression that means "parallel parking" in my language:
Lmao I cringe/laugh whenever I see translation errors here. This is a sign posted in the bathroom in one of the business major buildings at my university, and it still cracks me up.
( ... )
Yeah, I think google translate can sometimes get you close enough to parse something out if you're going in to a language you can read. But only if you spend a lot of time fiddling with it and cross referencing, and already have enough general translation and grammar skills to recognize where errors would be coming from
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Idk, maybe do some kind of in class activity to show how much it fails? Like google translate telephone or something? Or just more work on in class translation to get students used to doing that kind of work? Like maybe walking then thorough how you translated a passage step by step (looking at multiple word meanings, figuring out the grammar, and so on)?
I think some students will always turn to the computer, but maybe practice and confidence building can help for others? Honestly, tho, it's such a challenge!
Reply
At the end of it all, pop down that if they just think they can use a faulty program to breeze through a lesson, they should rethink taking the class and that if they think a boss or someone whose language it is will give them a pass, they have a cold day in hell waiting for them.
Reply
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Sometimes when I need to look up an English expression in dictionaries, I do a Google Translate comparison for fun. This is what it gave me when I looked up the expression that means "parallel parking" in my language:
( ... )
Reply
Reply
Lmao I cringe/laugh whenever I see translation errors here. This is a sign posted in the bathroom in one of the business major buildings at my university, and it still cracks me up.
( ... )
Reply
Yeah, I think google translate can sometimes get you close enough to parse something out if you're going in to a language you can read. But only if you spend a lot of time fiddling with it and cross referencing, and already have enough general translation and grammar skills to recognize where errors would be coming from
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