Google Translate is meant to be a legitimate online translation service; however for many, it is a world of fun for multilingual people, the reason being it manages to mess up the most simple sentences. That is the precise reason that the majority of world language teachers insist their students refrain from using Google Translate and go the old fashioned way with an English to Spanish dictionary.

When Google Translate was first launched in 2006 by Google Inc., it had a very small variety of languages, and the online translator was only able to translate English to other languages. Within a few short years, Google Translate took off, adding more than 40 different languages. The first languages available were Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Dutch, Greek, German, and from then on, countless others were added. Now in 2016 Google Translate supports 90 languages and serves up to 200 million people daily.

Part of those 200 million are students across the world as well as the students here at Northeast. In a survey completed by the German, Spanish, and French classes at LNE, these were the results found.

For German, a total of 37 surveys were done; 11 said they do use google translate, 26 said they don’t. Although, included in the 37, 10 said they use it rarely for words they don’t know. On a scale of helpfulness from 1 to 10, the average was 2.

As well as for the Spanish class, a total of 34 surveys were done; 22 said they do use google translate, 12 said they don’t, and included in the 34, 13 said they use it rarely for words they don’t know, and 6 said they use it for fun or for another language outside of school. On a scale of helpfulness from 1 to 10, the average was 6.

Lastly, for the French class a total of 17 surveys were done; 15 said they do use google translate, 2 said they don’t, and included in the 17, 9 said they use it rarely for words they don’t know, and 2 said they use it for fun or for another language outside of school. On a scale of helpfulness from 1 to 10, the average was 7.

Google Translate may have a vast variety of languages, but it does not apply grammatical rules when translating, which explains why, when reverse translated, sentences can sound like this:

English: “What is your name?”

   to

Spanish: “Cual es su nombre?”

Spanish: “Cual es su nombre?”

   to

English: “What her name?”

Take your teacher’s advice and give up the Google Translate when working on a class project. Some recommended and better overall online translators are http://www.leo.org and https://www.duolingo.com. These are used by the students who participated in the survey.

Sounding like a three year old isn’t the only risk when using Google Translate on an assignment for class. Some teachers ban it completely and will charge the student with cheating or plagiarism for using the online translator. One publication talks about students in the modern age and their ability to reverse translate papers and assignments. Unsurprisingly, plagiarism has increased in the last 10 years, not to mention 20 or 30 years.

Most translated plagiarism goes undetected because there has yet to be a good automated translation plagiarism detector invented. The reason being, there are many unconventional ways to translate certain words, not to mention all the different  grammar structures for separate languages. Another reason for this is that most plagiarism has some rewritten elements in it which when translated, won’t match up completely. There is some hope, however, for teachers all around because most plagiarists aren’t advanced translators, they will probably be caught.