Fuck You, Google Translator

Published by

Clarissa

October 17, 2012

Good students whose Spanish is quite excellent are tempted by this stupid thing to hand in a ridiculous jumble of unconnected words because they think that a translation by Google Translator is better than an essay in their own words. I don’t know what else to say to convince them that Google Translator is not capable of producing scholarly articles.

I have a feeling several of my students will fail their Senior Assignment and will not be able to graduate this year because of this stupid Google Translator. I don’t know what else I can say or do to make myself heard. I keep repeating that Google Translator cannot translate essays and make them comprehensible but I’m not getting through to the students. And then the students come to cry in my office which stresses me out.

I hate Google Translator.

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33 responses to “Fuck You, Google Translator”

hkatz

October 17, 2012

One possibility is banning the use of it (automatic 0 on an assignment). Another is to have them translate their own essays (or a peer’s essay) back into English out of whatever Google translator spewed out; maybe that would show them how bad it is? Have them be in your place, trying to figure out what one of their classmates actually wrote…

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  October 17, 2012
  
  For these Senior Assignment students, a 0 means they don’t graduate. These students could have written good essays but they had to go and sabotage themselves in this ridiculous way. It just makes me so angry!
  
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  1. Adam Mercadante
    
    August 24, 2016
    
    So they don’t graduate. They shouldn’t cheat.
    
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Vanessa Sosa

October 17, 2012

I use Google Translator myself when I’m trying to find a word in another language but do your students actually use it to write essays?! That is fucking lazy :O

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  October 17, 2012
  
  Essays! Entire essays! I just had to go through 15 pages of complete crap created by Google Translator. Can you imagine that? The essay sounds like ravings of a lunatic.
  
  “Novela su totalidad en completa los personajes son aqui todas por eso cadas veces mucho por el estilo.”
  
  15 pages of this.
  
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  1. Vanessa Sosa
    
    October 17, 2012
    
    What the hell did I just read? That made no sense whatsoever, and I’m a Spanish speaker :O
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      October 17, 2012
      
      15 pages, my friend. 15 pages of this shit.
      
      And then the same number of pages from another student.
      
      What I find especially offensive is that they didn’t even go over this stuff before handing it in.
      
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charlesrowley

October 17, 2012

If students use google translator against your expressed wishes they deserve to fail out. I would not allow them in my office to weep for their own stupidity. Just return their papers with an F. They truly earned it.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  October 17, 2012
  
  I keep thinking that it has to be my fault that I’m not getting through to them.
  
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  1. Kellen
    
    October 18, 2012
    
    It’s not, of course.
    It would be interesting to ask them *why* they think they need to do this – it could possibly be because they are stressed out and think that they *cannot* write a better paper on their own.
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      October 18, 2012
      
      One student explained it as follows: “I thought it would be easier and faster.”
      
      They are simply lazy.
      
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  2. Anonymous
    
    October 18, 2012
    
    GIVE THEM THEIR FUCKING F!
    
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  3. David Gendron
    
    October 18, 2012
    
    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
    
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Lina Conde (@linamaconde)

October 18, 2012

If they are English native speakers, you could write a text in Spanish, use google translation into English, and show it to them. They’ll see how absurdly wrong it becomes in English, and maybe then they’ll stop…

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  October 18, 2012
  
  This is exactly what I will do tomorrow. If that doesn’t work, nothing will.
  
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  1. David Gendron
    
    October 18, 2012
    
    It sounds like a kindergarten…
    
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  2. Lina Conde (@linamaconde)
    
    October 27, 2012
    
    How did it go?
    
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    1. bloggerclarissa
      
      October 27, 2012
      
      So I did the exercise and they all laughed when they saw how bad the Google Translate translations were. But I will only find out whether it sank in after they hand in the final essays in November.
      
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Biroul De Traduceri Amiris

October 18, 2012

Hello, I totally understand where you’re coming from…I am a certified translator and I have recently had to translate two user’s manuals from English into Romanian, that had been previously “translated” into English via Google Translate.. Just imagine 80 pages of technical nonsense that must sound professional in Romanian or else……

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  October 18, 2012
  
  That sounds horrible! I fully commiserate with you! 🙂
  
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Anonymous

October 18, 2012

Google translator is an excellent tool..but like any tool, you have to learn how to use it. Additionally, for languages that are not so connected to each other (like English and Spanish), it can be quite misleading, but I use it between English and Swedish and it’s great! For what you describe, your students just don’t want to make the effort and there’s probably gaps from Elementary school in terms of writing skills! Don’t hate google translate..let your students know that they can master any tool..if the have the will to improve and learn!

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Francis

October 18, 2012

I agree. If they are retarded enough to think that it’s acceptable to use Google Translate for the purposes of rendering an essay into another language, then they deserve to be failed.

If I were you, I would explain it one more time. If the quality of their essays is shit, they deserve to be failed regardless of the reason why the essay is shit.

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Maria

October 18, 2012

It isn’t your fault, I assure you! For the past few years I have been fighting the same battle and I totally sympathise. I find a student in a restaurant ordering his meal with the verb “rogar”, or “technical” used instead of “technician” on a CV, for example, and I immediately know they are using Google, which I find to be an excellent tool, for ME, but not for the students, because it needs to be used as a dictionary, not as a translating machine. It should have a warning saying: “This application does NOT have a brain; use your own.”

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  October 18, 2012
  
  Thank you, Maria! This Google Translator was never an issue before in all the years I have been teaching but now it’s an epidemic.
  
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Anonymous

October 18, 2012

I am an Arabic English translator and my second language is Spanish. And I DO HATE THAT STUPID THING THEY CALL GOOGLE TRANSLATOR. My advice to you is this:
Students X, Y and Z gave you Google translated essays. Choose one or two sentences of each of their crappy essays. In class ask student X (as if you chose him by mere coincidence) to translate what you’re going to write on the board from Spanish to English, then write his own sentence. The same goes to students Y and Z. They will realize how crappy their essays are in a practical way.
Another thing, you said you’ll feel guilty to give an F to a senior student. Fine, you can always threat 🙂 “Students X, Y, and Z I promise you if this was your final essay i’ll give you an F… suit yourselves”

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Cristina Usón Calvo

October 18, 2012

It happens exactly the same with my English students. They think I won’t notice it, but apart from being a teacher, I am also a transaltor and I do notice.
They are lazy indeed. And to top it all, most of them are able to write acceptable essays without that f**** translator, what gets on my nerves all the time!

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Margaret

October 18, 2012

They will not believe how bad it is unless you can demonstrate it to them in terms they can understand. Show them the English ravings of a lunatic created by passing a proper text in another language through the Translator. (Hopefully their grasp of English is good enough to show them that it’s nonsense.)

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Isabel

October 18, 2012

I have the same problems with my students but from spanish to english… They usually do it because: they don’t have time and, they think the teacher is not going to notice…. Big mistake. I fail them, and no second chances. It is not a matter of knowledge but of responsibility.

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Anonymous

October 18, 2012

Google Translator is great, but students who use it badly are stupid!

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David Gendron

October 18, 2012

test

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David Gendron

October 18, 2012

GIVE THEM THEIR FULLY DESERVED F TO THESE FUCKTARDS!

Google Translator is great, but students who use this badly are stupid.

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1. David Gendron
  
  October 18, 2012
  
  Corrected:
  
  GIVE THEIR FULLY DESERVED ZERO TO THESE FUCKTARDS!
  
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Anonymous

October 25, 2012

Gxxx Translator is not great at all! It doesn’t produce correct results (otherwise Gxxx would have used it to translate its documentation). It misleads language learners. And it has a negative impact on translation industry. (https://developers.google.com/translate/v2/pricing)
And why don’t people turn to online dictionaries (for example Collins, Tarousse, etc) instead when looking for words?

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