Laura Harrison

TEFL Course Advisor

Cactus Worldwide Ltd

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Many people disregard learning a new language on the basis that electronic translators are now widely available. While these translators are certainly convenient, they are nowhere nearly as good as actually understanding another language.

Take for instance, one example of electronic translating. If you plug in a Spanish sentence and you are looking for the English equivalent, the translator, because it is not human, will spit back the phrase directly translated word for word. This is not such a good thing, because in Spanish the adjective comes after the noun, while in English it is the opposite. So if you want to know what ‘chica guapa’ is in English, it will come back as ‘girl beautiful’. This is just a minor example, but if you have a whole phrase to translate it may come back completely incorrect. Is that a risk you are willing to take at a business meeting, or meeting you boyfriend’s parents? Ay carumba!

The other thing electronic translating can’t do is understand the history and the culture from where the language is you intend to translate. There are clichés, catch phrases, idioms, etc in all languages across the globe, which have an underlying meaning, which can only be translated by a person. For example, in English we have a saying, ‘you can kill two birds with one stone’. Well, it is seriously doubtful that an electronic translator will be able to explain that one! And there are exclusive phrases like this all over the world, depending upon the history of each culture.

So perhaps it would be more advantageous to learn another language, by taking a class where you begin to understand the language as well as the people who speak that language. You can save your electronic translator for just a few words here and there that you need translated quickly – just don’t depend on it for long bouts of dialogue with your future mother-in-law!