Question

Why are online translators inaccurate sources of help for assignments in a language course?

Answer 1

Some online translators try too hard to directly translate one language into another.

For example, someone once posted this Spanish sentence, asking for a translation:

¿Qué miras con nosotros?

Another person took that sentence, and put it in an online English translator. This is what came out:

"What a view with us?"

And, as you can guess, that was wrong.
The REAL translation is:

"What do you watch with us?"

Let me show you WHY the online translator got it wrong. I'll show you what each word in the sentence means.

Qué -- What
miras -- (you) view
con -- with
nosotros -- us

That's what each of the words in the sentence means.

But when you put them together, it DOESN'T mean "What a view with us."

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Some translators, like Google Translate, don't understand that there may be more than one way to say something. And the way that you say it really matters.

For example, in Spanish, there are two ways to say "you."
1. Tú (informal)
2. Usted (formal)

Whenever I type a sentence with "you" into Google Translate, it almost always gives me the formal "usted."
But you wouldn't call a friend "usted."
You would refer to them with "tú."