Google Translate 5 Ways It's Your Best Tool For Learning Spanish
Google is busy crawling the web every minute of every day. They know how to deal with web pages and content in dozens of languages. It's their business to understand all these different languages, be able to recognize different languages, and to be able to work with them. Consequently, Google has a great translator product.
Now, all that has changed. For years now, Google translate has had this feature where humans have been able to submit corrections and improvements to the Spanish translations Google offers. Years of learning from actual human Spanish speakers has made Google Translate very smart. The translations they offer are now very good, easily understandable, and it's very difficult to find any errors in them.
Some features of the Google Translate interface include language detection - you can just begin typing in any language, and Google Translate will detect what language is being typed, and do the translation. They also have a cool feature they've where the translated words appear in the translation window immediately as you type them. There is an X button in the upper right corner that is used to clear the text in the window. The standard shortcut keys work in the window including control C, control A, control Z, etc.
There is a quick way to reverse the translation language. In other words, if the source is Spanish translating into English, and you want to reverse it to English source being translated into Spanish, you would simply click on the button with the 2 left and right arrows.
Here is a list of 6 creative and original ways you can Learn Spanish by using Google Translate.
- Copy and Paste Spanish text into the Google Translate window to see what it means in English. Or, Copy and paste English text into the window in order to see how to say it in Spanish.
- Hover over words or phrases in the translation that Google has provided, and you will see the source text is highlighted. This feature makes it easy to see which Spanish words and phrases correspond to phrases and words in English. This is a very powerful learning feature, proving capability you might have if you had a native speaker in the room with you.
- Have Google Translate speak the Spanish words and phrases out loud to you. There's nothing like actually listening to a native speaker saying the Spanish words and phrases you want to learn. That's what you've always had here with Learn-Spanish-Faster.com and now that's what you can get with Google Translate.
In the translation box, simply click on the speaker icon in the lower right corner. (it has the text 'listen' when you hover over it.) You will hear exactly how to pronounce the word or phrase you are having translated.
- Alternate Translations. You can click on text in your translation and see a list of alternates you can use for a phrase or single word. Use the combo box to learn about alternate meanings and phrases. Depending on what you are translating, sometimes you'll get a combo box to look at and select alternate words that work in the phrase you are translating. This allows for more precise translating, and exploring different shades of meanings.
- Check Spelling. You can right click on the text boxes in Google Translate and check the spelling of the text in the box. Handy for seeing if you have a handle on correct Spanish spelling.
- Use the built-in keyboard to add special Spanish characters. Whenever you need to enter some Spanish text that includes some special characters like ñ, just click on the keyboard button in the lower right hand corner, and you can click on the key you need to enter your character. Of course, if you interested in learning how to enter those special Spanish characters using your own keyboard, you can check out this article.