There are a lot of websites and programs that offer free translation, can I use them?
They do seem to have advantages, they are fast and free. Unfortunately they do not work very well and you run the risk of sounding inarticulate or worse, stupid. You have to remember they are machines and as such cannot understand your message; they can only translate your words. That can cause quite a few problems with the resulting text, for example if you try Google Translator and translate “Everyone liked this book, but only a few people liked the other one” from English into Spanish, you will get this translation “Todo el mundo ha gustado este libro, pero slo unas pocas personas les gust la otra”, which in English would read “Everyone has like this book, but only few people liked the other”, sounds awful doesn’t it? In Spanish it sounds even worse because book is a masculine word, and book is referred to as “este” (masculine) and as “otra” (feminine). A few years ago, the Wall Street Journal tried two free online automatic translation services and concluded: “These services are pa
