"Language Immersion" voor Chrome - is het waard de tijd?

by **Dave114** » June 21st, 2012, 5:18 am

A few days ago I came across Language Immersion for Google Chrome which allows you to select a level of fluency and, based on that, it'll partially translate webpages into the selected language for you (and allow you to restore the original language of a portion by clicking on it).

I'm curious if anyone is using this and / or would care to comment on it.

Given that the translations are done by machine, is Google Translate reasonable enough with Dutch for this to be usable for learning purposes, or could it be counterproductive?

Is it even a good idea to by mixing together Dutch and (in my case) English or, at least until I'm more fluent, would I be better off sticking to either all-Dutch or all-English at a given point in time to avoid confusion? (Here this would be a way to mix in a bit of Dutch throughout the rest of the day).

**Sponsor**

Do not like ads? Register for free and view this forum without ads.

by **AppelstroopIsLekker** » June 21st, 2012, 11:26 am

Hmm... that is a really cool idea, actually. I use google translate quite a bit and must say that while it's one of the best, it's still not very good. For some reason, it does really poorly at everyday language and grammar but really well at highly specific, even technical, vocabularly.

Give it a shot. If you have no knowledge of the language at all, it can only help as long as you don't do it too long, I guess!

Goodluck!

Just a tip, in Dutch we say "is het de tijd waard?" A related expression is "is it worth the effort" which translates as "is het de moeite waard?" or simply "is het de moeite?" But, I think the last one might only be said in Flanders.

by **Joke** » June 21st, 2012, 9:37 pm

AppelstroopIsLekker wrote:Just a tip, in Dutch we say "is het de tijd waard?" A related expression is "is it worth the effort" which translates as "is het de moeite waard?" or simply "is het de moeite?" But, I think the last one might only be said in Flanders.

You can also say that in the Netherlands.

by **Dave114** » June 25th, 2012, 6:36 am

AppelstroopIsLekker wrote:Just a tip, in Dutch we say "is het de tijd waard?" A related expression is "is it worth the effort" which translates as "is het de moeite waard?" or simply "is het de moeite?" But, I think the last one might only be said in Flanders.

Thanks for the advice! I've definitely got a long way to go figuring out Dutch grammar, but I suppose that explains why I'm at a site like this one.

by **Quetzal** » July 7th, 2012, 9:59 am

AppelstroopIsLekker wrote:Hmm... that is a really cool idea, actually. I use google translate quite a bit and must say that while it's one of the best, it's still not very good. For some reason, it does really poorly at everyday language and grammar but really well at highly specific, even technical, vocabularly.

I agree, but that's quite logical. Google Translate, as I understand it, works by comparing different language versions of the same text and then learning from that how to translate a given word or phrase. Since technical vocabulary and terminology is far more likely to have a single correct translation that is used in nearly all cases, Google is going to do far better with those than with colloquial expressions that you can translate in a multitude of ways.

It does sound like an interesting idea... I should test it.