Can I trust Google Translate?

Last night, my husband Wayne and I watched a rerun of the movie "Midnight in Paris"  on TV.  It was even more enjoyable the second time around. 

Afterwards, I was bragging to Wayne that I had understood more of the French dialogue than before because I have been doing a free online course in French. "Okay," says Wayne, "so how do you say 'I want a glass of water' in French?"   Oops, he caught me.  I had forgotten that I need to learn practical words and phrases for our trip to Canada.

I decided then and there to write down ten of the most useful travel phrases for me personally and make sure I can say them in French, Portuguese and Spanish.  Those three languages, plus my native language, English, should take care of my travel needs for the next several years.  I knew I would need some help with the French.  Who should I turn to, but everyone's online friend Google Translate?

This was an embarrassing thought that gave me acute guilt feelings. I have spent years teaching foreign languages and threatening students with dire consequences if I caught them using Google Translate to do their homework. "Google Translate will get you in trouble.  It's not accurate," I warned haughtily.

So I am going to do the following experiment and share the results with you.  I will take the phrases listed below and attempt to put them in French, Portuguese, and Spanish.  If Google Translate does well with Portuguese and Spanish, languages that are more familiar to me, I will trust it to correct my amateur French translations. And I will put salt (or maybe a little New Mexico red chile powder) on my critical words concerning Google Translate and eat them if my findings exonerate that service.

My travel bookshelf

Here are my top ten useful travel phrases, in no particular order:

•  Where is the restroom, please?
•  I have a (room) reservation for tonight.
•  My name is Linda.  What is your name?
•  When does the train leave/arrive?
•  How much does it cost?
•  Pardon me.
•  Do you have a vegetarian dish?
•  May I have a glass of water please?
•  I want to buy a ticket please.
• Where is the restaurant (bus station, train station, museum)?

Are those the travel phrases that you would choose?  For next week's blog, I am going to translate them into Spanish and then check them against Google Translate.  Maybe you would like to do the same, and we can compare results.