Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Homeschool fun with Google Translate

What do you use Google Translate for? Have you ever searched 
Google Translate?

Today while the children were doing their schoolwork I was looking for an online feature I could use to translate my posts into different languaes, like Turkish, Japanese, Italian etc, that my children and I are learning. I found Google Translate and I began typing in sentences from my posts and switched it into Turkish to start the process of posting in Turkish, Japanese and Italian also, and some funny results came up with the Turkish translation. The automatic translater is accurate on the most part but some of the results are quite funny. I'm sure it'll create funny results in other languages too, so I won't be using it much. What I like about it is there is an audio feature and my boys had a blast typing in words and hearing them in other languages. They heard the words in languages they had never heard of before, so it was an opportunuty for them to discover new languages, and new peoples. We heard their own names in other languages and they really enjoyed that. Then, of course they wanted to be silly and J8 typed in "I am a dog" and heard this in other languages. In Turkish it translated as "Ben bir kopek" which is actually meant to be "Ben bir kopegim", so the translation is again, incorrect. O10 typed in "dog" for Japanese and he corrected his own accent in saying the word in Japanese. Once they got over their boyish silliness, they were actually learning if they typed in a word, and not sentences. I will allow them to use this "game", as this is what it is for them at the moment, several times a week for educational purposes. I myself had fun hearing words in different languages. I'll be downloading Google Translate for my iPhone so dc can use it for "play" and lend their little ears to foreign words and sounds on a weekly basis.


  1. If it is wrong on a translation, try the link at the bottom right...

    [+] Suggest a better translation

    That will help correct the translation entries, sadly as so few users bother to help correct this but complain instead the translations take longer to get corrected.

    So a useful tool becomes a game.

    Try teaching them to actually find erroneous translations so you can help correct them.

  2. Anon, yes I'm aware of the feature you mention though I wouldn't know what the correct translation would be, but thanks anyway. We use all useful tools for our use, be it in a game or otherwise, as long as it serves our educational purposes. I suggest you give it a go too. Thanks for visiting.

  3. I've used google translator before but haven't thought of it as a tool for learning. Thanks for the reminder!



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