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Items tagged with: spanish


So one of the problems with automated #translation based on #AI is that it's in this weird, awkward place now where it's not good enough to seem native, but it is good enough not to be immediately obvious. I had forgotten I set my browser to automatically translate pages in several languages to English for me. Then I clicked on a #fanfic, read the first couple chapters, and was getting really annoyed why one character kept changing Gender's, and the name of a location wasn't consistent from chapter to chapter. Turns out the author was writing in #Spanish, I hadn't noticed the language tag, and when I clicked the browser just automatically translated without clearly telling me. Thank goodness I realized, just in time, before I posted a comment on her work pointing out the issues with writing quality and offering editing help! Yikes! That doesn't mean that I'm against Machine Translation or even think it's a bad thing. But as it gets better and better, and starts living in this awkward uncanny valley, we really need to carefully rethink user interfaces. Maybe disable all form inputs until the user clicks "I'm aware this was translated" somewhere? I had the comment all written, folks; I was that close to posting. Maybe put "translated from" in some obvious place like the title bar? I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that we need to be putting way more thought into it.


Hey, friends learning #Spanish or #French:

Kwiziq is 40% off for the next week!

This is a fantastic tool with great grammar explanations that uses spaced repetition for grammatical concepts, mostly having you fill in the blank for sentences with the correct word (but also sometimes, multiple choice "which is the correct translation?" stuff).

This is how I plugged the gaps in my Spanish grammar left after doing Duolingo. This is how I passed the DELE B2.

#languageLearning


Things Your Spanish Teacher Didn't Tell You
mackenzie.morgan.name/posts/th…

@videsnelson is teaching a friend of his Spanish. He's a native speaker, not a language teacher.

I had 9 years of Spanish classes & 5 years of self-study, and I found answers to plenty of things my past teachers under-explained or explained in ways that caused predictable mistakes.

I started telling him what to tell her, so she could skip those frustrations.

The result is this blog post.

#Spanish #LanguageLearning

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