The World of Online Translators

Did you ever try to read a document with an online translator? I have.

I lived in the Netherlands for six months and many of my legal documents were in Dutch. More importantly I wanted to read a blog: A neurosientist's journal and I had no clue that I had changed my Google Chrome settings in such a way that I was not aware of the original language of the blog. I entered it and the sentences did not make any sense to me. I thought to myself, how can an academic's language be insufficient, and he has a blog in English!

The problem with online translators is that they don't have the context of our social worlds. They translate everything in their literal sense and it lacks flexibility. When machines have consciousness, we can overcome this problem. In the meantime we still need humans who are multilingual.

A Brave New World of a Brand New Series

Have you ever used wikispaces in your language learning process? This is a first time for me as a prospective English Language teacher as well. For this week's task we were supposed to write a brief summary of our favourite books to wikispaces. The aim is to create an interactive environment for the language learner because you can edit what I have created and the same goes for you. For example if you create a story of your own, your teacher or peer can take a look at what you have written and correct your grammar. One of the most important aspects of acquiring a language is that it becomes an interactive process as your first language was.

I present you my first attempt to use wikispaces: My favourite book