I have to say that Penny's video made me laugh out loud! (I've included it below for those who haven't seen it yet.) I think I will actually show that video to my Year 6 students as the start of a discussion about online translators and their accuracy (or lack thereof!).
It's actually quite topical, because I have started to introduce my students to being able to word-process in Japanese script. The students think it's great, as it is much easier than laboriously trying to write unfamiliar hiragana characters by themselves. The really keen students are eager to start writing as much as they can, and often want to look up the words that they need. Because I travel from room to room, the students don't have access to a class set of traditional dictionaries, and I will often use an online dictionary myself if I have to find a word I don't know when asked by a student. The danger of course, is that students go beyond a single word and try to look up whole phrases or paragraphs. (Or they try to translate a sentence one word at a time, keeping the same word order as in English, and end up with complete gibberish!)
I think this is a really good way to demonstrate the complexity of language. I often say that languages, like most things, don't always follow rules - there are always exceptions. This is why computers can't match the human brain when it comes to languages and translations (well, not yet, anyway!!)
自己紹介
- Tate-Sensei
- Perth, Western Australia, Australia
- I teach Japanese to students in Kindergarten to Year 6 at a private, co-educational K-12 Anglican school in Perth, Western Australia.
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I have already used this clip with my 1A kids (year 10). Very successful - all I had to say was - yes, sometimes it works, sometimes you can pretty much understand it, and sometimes it just makes no sense at all. And you have no way of knowing. It's great to have something so light-hearted / humourous to use in this way!
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