GoogleTranslate and hockey

[Benjamin Barrett]

On Feb 11, 2012, at 4:46 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 2/11/2012 07:25 PM, Dan Nussbaum wrote:
>> I have found some German words on Google translate that were not in
>> my 979 page German-English dictionary.
>>
>>
>> However, I would not use it for anything longer that a phrase.
>
> I've used it profitably to get the general sense of a passage,
> recently quite well on two long paragraphs from Buffon
> (1766).  However, I would not rely on it for specifics, details (it
> got some misleadingly in the Buffon passages).

I frequently use Google Translate for helping with vocabulary and sometimes phrases. It's accuracy continues to surprise me. On occasion, I'll use it on a paragraph to learn what the general subject is, but place no faith in anything longer than a collocation or phrase.

Another nice tool is Wiktionary. Many or most entries have a hidden translation section and you can look at the foreign language version of the page if available as well. To complement Wiktionary and the other Wiki projects on my iPhone, I like Fast Wiki.

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

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