Google Translate
Persuasive Speech: Google Translate
When it comes to translating languages, I have one enemy, and that is Google Translate. How many of you use Google Translate? How many of you use it for your language classes, like Spanish and French? We can infer that we all have been in situations where we urgently needed to translate someone else’s words that we cannot understand. Some of you may experience this with Spanish or Chinese. You may have been in many stores where these directive sign boards have the names of items in English and in another language. And most of you definitely have taken a language course in high school. No matter what language you took, each of them has a unique structure and set of rules and grammar stuff to follow, right? So, you took a very long time to get them all into your brain, and application and remembering all of them when you were still getting more rules seemed impossible. And a problem with dialects, too, how can Google Translate detect a specific dialect in Spanish, when all it cares is that you get the general idea, like what a foreigner learns, not anything helpful, like if you want to travel to Spain. Good luck surviving there. I speak with many friends from Mexico, and mainly knowing the Spanish and Peruvian dialects of the Spanish language, I often find it easy, but Google Translate is like, “what is this?”s These things all account for the inability for Google Translate to meet the expectations of your language professor. So, today, I will be talking about Google Translate’s origins, its role in communication among people of different languages, and finally, its role in the lives of students and its influence on their grades, all in hopes to warn you of the traps you may be caught in.
The first of three main points that I want to share with you is to define what Google Translate is, so you can understand its creation and purpose, and why it is still being promoted and updated so popularly.
So, what is Google Translate? Google Translate is a digital translation tool that enables you to translate words and phrases from one language to another, like English to Spanish, which is often its default language settings. As mentioned by Translate Press on July 9th, 2024, It was originally made to only translate between English and Russian (Translate Press, 2024). But even so results were often poor as it continued to be in the works from 2004 to 2016, and only in recent years it has started shaping up more, and Spanish is quite the most accurate language that it can translate, but hardly. From two languages, they have expanded to 249 languages, and will continue to adapt many more, which I originally considered impressive until I realized that their system didn’t translate anything right. For example, I put in a simple sentence like “the purple box is behind you, and the yellow box is above you” and it eventually went on to say “this” which was not what I wanted to say, and did not help me whatsoever. Additionally, there are many rules that they do not abide by, which I will explain later on.
Next, I’ll be talking about Google Translate’s role in making conversatioons.
When I polled you earlier, many of you have used Google Translate to make conversations. I want to use a quick minute to bring up the use of Google Translate when conveying medical conditons and information to patients and family members who may not have a human translator, the Nation Library of Medicine, lasted updated on December 15, 2014, noted several occasions in which it has often conveyed inaccurate messages and often leads to a lot of painful misunderstandings, such as when patients are told that their child is dead when actually the correct message is that the child is okay (National Library of Medicine, 2014). Now, remembering the factor of how inaccurate it is in sending our message across, we may come off as offensive and clueless. Or in some instances Google Translate uses the most formal structure of that language and would make me feel like a foreigner speaking it rather than someone who is somewhat familiar with the language. While it is not necessary to know simplications and slangs of the language you are trying to communicate through, you also don’t want to use words that aren’t even necessary and may sound strange, as we tend to forget that its translations fail to account for the numerous dialects that each language may have. Growing up and learning Tamil as my second language, I often realized that where I was born, my hometown is the origin of that language and has the purest form of it, but outside of it, it is full of slang. Google Translate will make it sound like you are talking too formally in which no one uses anymore. Spanish is quite the same as my third language for me. I actually understand Peruvian, Venezuelan, Colombian, Spanish, and Mexican dialects as my teachers were experienced in each of these dialects, and of course the words, the slangs, the structures changes. Google Translate will not detect that for you and defaults to whatever it may be. Also, some languages, like Tamil, my language, have rules in addressing elders, younger people, people of different genders, and so forth, but Google Translate will not account for that. If I put in something like “girl,” Google Translate would make it seem like I’m addressing a very old man, which is not my intended purpose. The more unknowledgeable it is in the language, the more Google Translate will not be able to adhere and adapt to the typical rules of each language and their respective dialects.
The last thing I want to mention is its prevalent use in language classes, and how students utilize it to keep their grades high.
As I said earlier, Google Translate is decent with English…and maybe Spanish. And French. And German. And Chinese. And Japanese. And…okay, you get my point. But these languages are the ones Google Translate developers focus a lot on, because one of their targets to promote this tool is students. Most of you would have had to take a language course in high school, and eventually at first you’re willing to dedicate yourself to learn it, but eventually you’re like UGH and you decide to just use Google Translate. In some cases, it helps you, and in others it doesn’t. According to Larry Ferlazzo from Education Week, last updated on June 25, 2024, Google Translate is a decent tool, but there are right and wrong times and ways to implement it into your assignments. Your teachers may be very picky about things like, “where did this me gusta comer come from?” They may say that certain words or structure or grammar or alternative spellings may be wrong and not meet the expectations of the language that is more adaptable to the society you live in, which makes things much harder for you. It is not recommended to use this as a tool for school, and it is not as valuable and AI-powered as everyone’s favorite weapon, ChatGPT. I’ve asked a lot of people how long they have taken their language classes in high school, and they often say over three years. Then I ask if they could speak, read, or write it, and they said no.Therefore, this is a lesson for you to think about ways to motivate yourself to learn the subject and language rather than relying on a tool that knows much less about the language than you do. Remember, you learn the rules in class, Google Translate defies the rules.
In the end, you’ve learned what Google Translate is, how ineffective it is in communication, and how it typically cannot be relied upon to learn a language in a language class. I hope today serves as a channel for bad memories of how Google Translate has betrayed you in previous years, and I hope that serves as a lesson to always use caution when using Google Translate. Remember that “My name is Neha” does not equal to “I am a watermelon” in any language in any universe. Thank you.
Works Cited
Ferlazzo, L. (2024, June 25). When Is It OK to Use Google Translate in the English-Learner
Classroom? Education Week.
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-the-use-or-misuse-of-google-translate-in-the-ell-classroomwhen-is-it-ok-to-use-google-translate-in-the-english-learner-classroom/2024/06
Google Translate Review for Teachers | Common Sense Education. (2014). Common Sense Education. https://www.commonsense.org/education/reviews/google-translate
Patil, S., & Davies, P. (2014). Use of Google Translate in medical communication: evaluation of accuracy. BMJ, 349, g7392–g7392. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g7392
Schäferhoff, N. (2024, July 5). The History of Google Translate (2004-Today): A Detailed Analysis. TranslatePress. https://translatepress.com/history-of-google-translate/
The Pros and Cons of Google Translate. (n.d.). Language Connections.
https://www.languageconnections.com/blog/the-pros-cons-of-google-translate/