When I don’t have much time, I use Google Translate to write articles. My translation flow is as follows. First, write a draft in Japanese, then translate it into English with Google Translate. After that, look at the translated English and correct it into English that I feel is clear.
I’ve repeated this process about 10 times, and first of all, I’m very surprised by its accuracy. Furthermore, it is very interesting to know how to express in English with several expressions which I usually struggle with writing/speaking. I think I will be more fluent in English with this practice.
On the other hand, of course, machine translation seems to have its limits. I feel particularly limited by the difference in grammatical subjects between Japanese and English. In Japanese, the subject is often omitted or written in a passive form. When I translated this, it became unnatural. However, compared to when I first learned about machine translation long years ago, it has become much more accurate, and when I think about language education in the future, I feel that there is a possibility of teaching how to relate to machine translation.
