Translating your ideas ( your French ones) into English may be difficult, especially if you have decided to make a deal with an evil online translator that inevitably will fail to grasp the meaning of your sentence. And the outcome will be even worse if you have naively trusted one of them to translate a whole sentence or even -for the most reckless ones- a whole paragraph !!! ( "Nan mais allô !" would Nabilla say)
Here are a few examples of what happens to you when , after a few seconds of deep meditation, you've come up with the idea of resorting to online translation, only to save time ( yes, I know, tonight, there's no way for you to miss the latest episodes of "Games Of Thrones").
What you hadn't expected was that :
- " il a été malade" could be turned into a lovely : " he has summer ill".
- " elles tombent enceintes" could become : " they grave pregnant"
( a grave = une tombe)
- or that " he came..." could be transformed into: " il est drogué" (yes, "la came" in French, does exist)...
Those three examples prove that :
- ... hey, what did you expect ?? Me to put the blame on the online translators ?? Well, bad pick ! :-)
- they all point to the fact that the pupils, most of the time, do not know how their own language works. So this is unfortunately what happens every day...
Only use the translators if you have one single expression or word to translate and if your spelling is correct. Otherwise, you're very likely to write either an unintelligible sentence or a hilarious one. In both situations, you'll be the real loser. :-( Too bad, isn't it ?
My favourite online dictionary is http://www.wordreference.com/
You can even listen to the UK or US pronunciation of most of the words !
The following links are interesting if you want to enrich/expand your vocabulary ( synonyms, antonyms...etc):
Now, you are free to decide : resorting to online translators without trying to think first is the best way to be spotted at once ! :-) So stick your necks out and trust in yourselves !
