Hello everyone,

I'm wondering how you all communicate with your SO's. If they speak a foreign language and you use an online method to communicate like I do (MSN chat) I also have a tranlator website open on the side to help. My fiance is in Brasil, and I am learning portuguese but I still need the tranlator to help.

So, the tranlator I use is: www.online-translator.com which i like very much, it seems to be really accurate.

If you use an online translator, post the website. I'm always curious to see if there is a better one out there.

Ugh....I HATE translator websites - they're oh so bad in my opinion.
But then again, I can't imagine having to use one to communicate with my SO (sorry).

Ditto that, but I usually use one just for translating single words, and then conjugate the verbs and put in pronouns myself. I just have a hard time remembering the vocabulary.

I use freetranslation.com . Seems to be decent for español.

Eww.I don't like on-line tranlsator sites for the simple reason certain colloquialisms get lost in the translation.Especially with Portuguese since there are at least a half dozen different ones.Ex.Brazil(my favorite),Portugal,Cape-Verde,Guinee-Bissau,Azores,Madiera,Angola,Macau,Mocambique.Keep practicing your Brazilian,hopefully with some native-speakers and you'll pick it up in a heartbeat.

I use Altavista Babel Fish. But you will still got a lot things lost in translation. We have been speaking for almost a year. It was easier for her to learn english than for me to pick up on all the Portuguese. It help me when I located a poem that was written in Portuguese and English. This help me with putting my English words in good order for the translation if that makes sense. Good luck with your Journey. I sent mine off on February 26, 2008.

Don

I can't imagine using a translator to speak with Homeboy!

Interesting that this topic came up...I just recently finished an article on how crappy machine translations are!

Me neither! We both speak English and I'm pretty proficient in Spanish, and sometimes we talk to his sister online. One time she was copying and pasting weird stuff in English like "you are (is) pretty" and we're like, Diana, what site are you using! It's so obvious and not only that, but it hinders understanding just as much as it helps.

I'm fluent in Spanish & English and my fiancé speaks Spanish so we speak in Spanish. I speak a different dialect of Spanish, so sometimes, even being fluent in the language, I have to go to wordreference.com to find different ways to say things.

Por Ejemplo ~ I am a heritage learner and I speak a very "spanglish-ized" version of Spanish, so sometimes I'll say things like "hangear" or "chillear" (to hang out, to chill) and my fiancé has no idea what that means, and I don't know how to translate it... so I go to wordreference, plug in what I want to say and BOOM there it is.

It's helpful. Online translators are not very accurate. If you have no other way to communicate, I guess it's the best way but I would recommend taking a course in the target language (I'm a future Spanish teacher, education is progress!)... or ask your fiancé to take courses in English (mine is, he was forced to by me lol)....

Poco a poco (Little by little!) If you have a basic grasp on the language, and just need help with certain vocabulary, verbs, etc... I would recommend highly the website I just mentioned... wordreference.com. It has portuguese translations, italian and spanish.

ditto.

I have several websites bookmarked at home. None of them are too good, but I can post here later on. Online translators help if you want to translate a word or something. They all suck for sentences and correct grammar.

Online translators aren't perfect but when you are learning a new language and just don't know how to say something or understand something a person says, they are helpful.

I still occasionally use it: http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en

How about a dictionary?

I mean I understand using a translator website and/or dictionary to look up words you dont' know (especially if you can't just explain it in your SO's language), but using a website to communicate? That seems weird to me . Communication is KEY in a relationship.

Maybe there's something to not being able able to completely communicate with your wife/husband. Look at the US, the divorce rate is 60% and they speak the same language. The rate is a lot smaller for American-foreign couples.

We speak English. When I don't know how to say something I use WordReference. It gives several translations of the word and there's a forum. that's really helpful.
I don't use any translator to translate full sentences though. All the ones we've tried are very bad.

As promised, all the ones I have bookmarked at home:

http://world.altavista.com/

http://dictionary.reference.com/translate/

http://www.online-translator.com/text.asp#tr_form

http://www.freetranslation.com/

http://translation2.paralink.com/

http://translate.google.com/translate_t

http://translation.paralink.com/default.asp

http://www.tranexp.com:2000/Translate/result.shtml - my favorite

http://www.appliedlanguage.com/free_translation.shtml

lol....I thaught i was the only one who does that.