Online translators?

[gabi in japan]

I was just on the Practice Japanese forum and in the 下の人　game. I didn't understand some of posts so I used an online translator. It came up with some hilarious translations!! For example, for 下の人がヘビが好きです, a rather simple sentence which even I could translate, it translated as "I like people under snakes"

I gather that using an online translator is not such a good idea --?! Is it ok though to use it for checking individual words, not sentences?

[furrykef]

I basically wouldn't recommend online translators for any purpose except as a last resort. Not even as a primitive dictionary; use something like WWWJDIC for that. For translating European languages (as long as both languages are European), it's not so bad, although even then they're too unreliable for my tastes. Google Translate in particular does some bizarre things sometimes...

One time somebody commented on a Japanese exercise I did in Japanese -- they obviously didn't speak English. So under it, they "helpfully" provided an English translation that obviously came from Excite (without saying it was a translation). Until I was sure that it was a machine translation, it had only served to confuse me further...

- Kef

[Sairana]

Is it ok though to use it for checking individual words, not sentences?

It's probably even a worse idea to use it for individual words, since you've taken the word out of context entirely to translate it that way. Whatever it comes back with may be completely retarded, and you'll never know!

Use WWWJDIC For word lookup instead. At least that way you can also look at example sentences using the word to get a better idea of the nuance or various different ways it can be used.

[gabi in japan]

Thanks guys for your quick replies!
That WWWJDIC is great! I love it! It's so easy to use and I wish I'd found it sooner. It'll be a great help.