I am currently working on a learning initiative with foreign exchange students. Although the college are dealing with the majority of documentation. I need to ensure my own documentation can be understood by the exchange students.
Has anyone used the likes of Google Translate, Word or any other suitable IT to translate from English? Do they provide suitable translations?

I am not bi linguistic so will have to rely on external translation.

Thanks in advance

We took on some Polish workers whose ability to speak English ranged from none to passable. We employed the services of a translator. We used the translator for the initial discussions with the employees and to translate a number of our documents. We also tried to arrange for the different groups to have someone who could speak English in each one. The online translations programmes were only used now and then and did cause some sniggering, so were not entirely full proof, especially with technical phrases.

The translator was kept on retainer for times when issues arouse and with the above we made headway. We also provided them with evening classes in English. Interestingly all swear words and rude phrases were picked up by the English employees very quickly ( and visa versa).

The problem is, there may be more than one language to contend with, unless there is a common one through the group. One would hope that if they are studying in this country they can speak at least some English. One problem we did have was health surveillance, where the NHS was not keen on a translator being present. As the Polish employees did not mind, the NHS eventually conceded.

Brett

I agree with the general concensus here. I speak, read, write and understand Spanish having lived there for a number of years. I recently received an e-mail written in Spanish which I understood. Just out of interest I decided to put it through an online translator. What came out in English was almost pure rubbish.

No substitute for a real live bilingual tranlator.

Adrian

The easiest way to see how limited these online translation packages are, is to type something into the translation box in English, and translate into, say, Spanish. Then, copy and paste the result back into the translator and translate back to English.

The end result will at best only bear a fair relation to what you initially typed. They are OK for translating individual words, or short phrases, but anything more than that generally confuses them.