Is Google Translate good? See how the translation service works

Many language teachers have probably heard this question: “What Google translator it's good?". After all, Google's free translation tool is very popular, used by students and even professionally. Understand in this guide how Google translator works and what are the essential tips to get the most out of this tool.

Answering directly and clearly about the quality of the tool: yes, the Google Translate is good and the result is satisfactory. It is, of course, not the same product in terms of quality and purpose compared to the work of a human translator, but it is competent in what it proposes to do – to allow the user to fully or partially understand a passage in a foreign language.

For the most searched and translated languages ​​it is reasonable to expect a good result. Therefore, when we start from Portuguese, the connection with languages ​​such as English, French, German, Spanish e Italian, for example, usually gives good results in translation.

In some language pairs, even, the tool is surprisingly accurate. Among the most common — English/Spanish, English/French, English/Chinese — the result in acuity came close to that of the work of human translators. This is a result of both the way the service works and the possibility of users reporting problematic or wrong translations.

How does Google Translate work?

Since 2016, the online translation tool has been operating from a neural model capable of learn some patterns. Not only that, but the network started to have bigger sentences as its biggest concern, and not just separate words as it was previously. From a practical point of view for the user, this results in a translation much closer to the work that would be done by a person, leaving in the past those translations without foot or head that treated each word individually.

By dividing sentences into segments, the translation service calculates possible meanings in the connection between them, and finally matches the result with grammatical patterns. As complex as it sounds, not only is the process very fast, it also doesn't require a lot of computing power. This intelligence is known as statistical machine translation or "statistical automatic translation".

In addition, walking and evolving, artificial intelligence and learning (machine learning algorithm ) make the results even better. The number of languages ​​covered also grew a lot, reaching more than 100 languages. It is interesting to note that the neural network already has its own artificial language, being able to perform direct translations without having to resort to English, for example.

Languages ​​available on Google Translate

In all, the online translation tool supports 109 languages. We list them all below:

• Afrikaans;
• Albanian;
• German;
• Amharic;
• Arabic;
• Armenian;
• Azerbaijani;
• Basque;
• Bengali;
• Belarusian;
• Burmese;
• Bosnian;
• Bulgarian;
• canarim;
• Catalan;
• Kazakh;
• Cebuano;
• Simplified Chinese);
• Traditional Chinese);
• Sinhalese;
• Korean;
• privateering;
• Croatian;
• Kurdish;
• Danish;
• Slovak;
• Slovenian;
• Spanish;
• Esperanto;
• Estonian;
• Filipino;
• Finnish;
• French;
• West Frisian;
• Scottish Gaelic;
• Galician;
• Welsh;
• Georgian;
• Greek;
• Gujarati;
• Haitian;
• Hausa;
• Hawaiian;
• Hebrew;
• Hindi;
• Hmong;
• Dutch;
• Hungarian;
• Igbo;
• Yiddish;
• Indonesian;
• English;
• Yoruba;
• Irish;
• Icelandic;
• Italian;
• Japanese;
• Javanese;
• Khmer;
• Laothian;
• Latin;
• Latvian;
• Lithuanian;
• Luxembourgish;
• Macedonian;
• Malayalam;
• Malay;
• Malagasy;
• Maltese;
• Maori;
• Marathi;
• Mongolian;
• Nepali;
• It fell;
• Norwegian;
• Oria;
• Panjabi;
• Pashto;
• Persian;
• Polish;
• Portuguese;
• Quinyarwanda;
• Kyrgyz;
• Romanian;
• Russian;
• Samoan;
• Serbian;
• Sindhi;
• Somali;
• Southern Soto;
• Swahili;
• Swedish;
• Sundanese;
• Tajik;
• Thai;
• Tamil;
• Tartarus;
• Czech;
• Telugu;
• Turkish;
• Turkmen;
• Ukrainian;
• Uighur;
• Urdu;
• Uzbek;
• Vietnamese;
• Xhosa;
• Shona;
• Zulu.

What started with just text identification, today translates content in five different ways. The tool shows the supported identification types for combination with Portuguese in the language page of Google translator.

In the screen below, for example, you can see that the Portuguese-German combination is available for all types of translation. Amharic can only be entered as plain text and for conversations with the audio feature.

Google Translate in web browser

On computers, the simplest and fastest way to use the free translation tool is directly through the browser. On cell phones, it is also possible to access them through browsers, but another interesting option is to download the application - which allows the user to perform translations even when offline, in addition to facilitating the translation of images through the cell phone camera.

1. To translate a text, just transcribe it – or copy it – in the left box and the tool will show the translation in the right box;

2. It is possible to change the desired languages ​​by selecting the arrows indicated in green, in addition to inverting the position languages ​​through the button indicated in the red circle;

3. To generate the document translation, simply select “Documents" beside "Text” and upload the desired file: .doc, .docx, .odf, .pdf, .ppt, .pptx, .ps, .rtf, .txt, .xls or .xlsx files are allowed.

It is possible to save your translations from the star icon, written “salvos” below, both on the computer, cell phones and tablets.

Features in Google Translate for Chrome

The online translation tool plugin makes life easier for Chrome users, since when installing, it is unnecessary to access the service's website. The highlight of the extension is that it can translate entire web pages automatically.

1. The first thing to do is access the extension page of Google Tradutor and install it by clicking Use in Chrome;

2. The extension installs in a matter of seconds. Now just enter a page with content in another language to start translating. In the example below, the page has not yet been translated Google Translate English to Portuguese;

3. Near the search bar, an extension push will appear asking you to perform the translation. You can choose the language according to the content or check the box to always translate from the foreign language that is most present on the pages you visit.

Google Translate on iPhone and iPad

Available to iOS, the app of Google translator makes it possible to use the tool even when there is no connection to the network. When installing the app, you can already select two desired languages, being able to download more languages ​​to be used in the offline. Here's how it works:

1. From the application's home screen, access the Settings in the lower right corner;

2. Click on the Offline Translation;

3. Add the desired language from the list from the sum;

4. Ready. Each language will occupy a certain space on your smartphone's memory.

Camera image translation works for versions from 4S and iOS 11.

Google Translate for Android

for users of Android, the app is available at Play Store. In this case, to translate images with the camera into all available languages, the device needs to have an autofocus camera and a dual-core CPU with ARMv7.

How to translate images with Google Translate

Translating text directly from images is another very interesting possibility. When selecting “Camera”, just point to the text and the app will transpose the translation for you.

It is worth mentioning that it is faster and more efficient to separate it into smaller sections, as the translation of text into images brings a result closer to how the Translator worked before the arrival of its current model.

How to translate speech and voice in Google Translate

It is also possible to translate from voice, that is, spoken text. Just select the microphone icon and allow the app to record audio as shown in the image below.

How do I contribute to the Google Translate community?

Before knowing if the Google translator good or not, it's nice to know that there are some ways to contribute to improving the translation service. It is possible to suggest some change in the translation, in case the user identifies an error or limitation in the result. There is also the possibility to collaborate by clicking on the button Contributing.

From there you must indicate the languages ​​spoken and evaluate translations or even translate sentences. The service will measure the impact of your contributions.

If you want to complain or point out something more substantively, it is interesting to proceed with the feedback. Both the icon for editing, and the icon for the desktop feedback, are indicated in the image below.

Alternatives to Google Translate

There are some similar tools that can help you when translating. Microsoft translator, for example, can also be used offline and offers 60 languages. O BingMicrosoft Translator is available for iPhone, Android e web browser.

Another interesting alternative is the Linguee, which is not a translator, but a very useful online dictionary to look up words and expressions in 26 languages. It can be accessed by navigator or downloaded to Android.

Now serving as both a translator and a dictionary, the Reverso stands out for focusing on the context. When translating, it offers options for using words in different situations. However, the number of supported languages ​​is smaller, there are 13 in total. You can use it in web browser or download to iOS ou Android. It can also be installed as a Chrome extension.

Google Translate vs. DeepL

Among some others services competing with Google Translate,  DeepL has been gaining prominence. The translator also works from a neural network with machine learning algorithm , but can directly access the dictionary ling — one of the best free online dictionary services. This is very interesting for the user, since on the same page of the translation it is possible to leave the cursor on a word and see the dictionary below.

In contrast, the DeepL it supports a much smaller number of languages, around 30, and does not have some services available in Google's tool – such as audio and image translation with text.

DeepL claims to have a most advanced neural model, resulting in less mechanical translations. Some users actually prefer the service, but it is worth mentioning that, in many cases, the services generate the exact same translation, while in others they generate different translations, more grammatically correct, depending, then, on a human analysis to know which is the most appropriate. .

It is an interesting tool just like Google Translate, however, it is important to keep in mind that both services fail on the same things. It lacks general understanding and ability to understand context, as well as the ability to deal with expressions and jargon more comprehensively.

See more:

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How to free up space on Android phones | 10 Tips

Pig iron: DeepL e Google translator.