Google Translate is not your friend

I know that some students will be distraught to hear that, but here is a very long article to tell you what all language teachers already know: Google translate is not smart enough to translate any language accurately.  To translate accurately, you need to understand context, you need to understand culture, you need to understand that some words mean completely different things depending on how you use them.  Computers are not intelligent enough.  We should be proud of that.  An example: I posted a picture of my husband in France ” à la place aux herbes”  .  It’s a plazza called  the plazza of herbs.   It’s where the market is, so I imagine they used to sell aromatic herbs there.  But in French, ” à la place”  also means ” instead of/ in place of” .  So Google translated by ” my husband instead of herbs” .  6 words, and Google translate got it completely wrong.  Sometimes it also gets it right.  The problem is that,  most of the time the people who use Google translate will not have the expertise to realize when it’s wrong.  Which is why, especially in a critical situation, you should do your own translating.  Look up words one by one and string them together into a sentence.  It will not be perfect, but at least eventually you’ll get better at it.  That’s what learning  is about.   Not the result, but the process.