How many times have you read or been given the advice: Use Google Translate to translate your articles into other languages. If you followed this advice, you've been had; someone is right now laughing their socks off over your article. All I can say to you: Don't do it. It will translate word by word, as it can't follow the sense of your article.
Google Translate is a tool for you when translating from another language into your own while doing research. Don't rely too much on what you read. The word by word translation offered by Google is not reliable. Too many words in one language have multiple meanings in another, and Google goes for the one that is most used. A machine isn't able to go by what makes sense in the context of what has been written in the original language. Check your information with other sources before singing the hallelujah.
Don't use Google Translate translations to quote all or part of what you translated if you aren't fluent in both languages. If you absolutely have to quote, do it in the original language and let the readers use a Google Translate in their turn. If you quote in English, you take the blame for any gibberish: if your readers use Google Translate, they should be aware of its severe limitations. If they aren't and bother you - refer them to my blog.
And now comes the hammer. When I use the expression Google Translate in this post, then I use it pars pro toto. Google Translate is one of many translation tools on offer on the net, as an app, or even as a separate machine. I mean them all without exception when I say Google Translate.
A bit of fun on the side for you to check out how bad these translations can be. Take a paragraph from an article of yours and put it through Google Translate into any language that catches your eye. Then put that through it again into another language of your choice. Continue until you have gone through a dozen languages. Now translate back to English. Enjoy the laugh.
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