How accurate is Google Translate audio?

[flynnfrogg]

hi all

I am a self-learner (beginner level) Here in Perth, WA, I don't meet that many Mandarin-speakers. I rely on Google Translate to learn the sound of Chinese words. But how accurate is it? I guess individual characters and bi-syllabic words should be OK but in your opinion, does Google Translate handle complete sentences well (audio-wise)?

Thanks

Flynn Frogg

[navaburo]

Flynn,

I would strongly advise against using Google Translate for pronunciation, especially at the sentence (prosody) level.

Don't rely on a machine translation, and especially not on machine pronunciation.

For learning prosody, I'd recommend reading along with audio books, or listening to podcasts with transcripts (Mansu Zhongwen is one example that comes to mind).

Cheers,

Chris

[jbradfor]

I'm a bit confused..... are you saying that you type in sentences (in Chinese or in English?) into google, it (translates and then) pronounces it for you, and that's how you learn how Chinese is pronounced?

[flynnfrogg]

@jbradfor - you asked:

" it (translates and then) pronounces it for you, and that's how you learn how Chinese is pronounced?"

Not completely so - I use Google audio as a means to hear the difficult sounds (difficult for me, that is - an example is the 'ju' of 'post office')

In my attempt to hear Mandarin sounds, I watch two daily TV dramas every day (obtained daily from a Singaporean source who appeared to be able to get the previous nights Singapore TV Channel 8 ) - that's almost 2 hours exposure daily - but ha ha - I get so sucked into the dramas that I realise I am not paying any attention to the dialogs (Singapore Chinese programs come hardcoded with English subtitles)

Flynn

[bande]

The phonetics of Chinese are very demanding, as the recent thread of pinyin b versus p demonstrated. Do you have any linguistics background? If you don't, I would get an intro text such as Catford's Introduction to Phonetics, and work through it so it can help you understand the technical descriptions of pinyin. Then, find a good learners text with audio. Someone else will probably have a good recommendation. Spend as much time as you can on the tones, but it probably still won't be enough. It may be possible to find a good teacher in Australia who can tell you when you're saying something wrong and how to correct it, but those people tend to be rare outside of China. Most Chinese people won't correct you if you're wrong or won't know how to fix your pronunciation. Snigel in his website also has some good ideas. Anyway, I wouldn't trust google translate.

[flynnfrogg]

thanks @navaburo - you recommended "listening to podcasts with transcripts (Mansu Zhongwen is one example that comes to mind)." But I can't find Mansu Zhongwen anywhere (I googled it but to no avail) - a URL please?

thanks @bande for your advice - I did indeed do a course in Linguistics aeons ago and I did (before my wife (a Hokkien speaker) left) had someone to correct me whenever I got my tones wrong but actually my saving grace is my thick skin - I am totally prepared to be laughed at when I speak my (brand of) Mandarin in the food halls of Singapore - the last time you should see the look on the lady's face when i told her that I wanted to eat her prawn noodles!!.

[jkhsu]

I think it's slow chinese 慢速中文 (Mansu Zhongwen) http://www.slow-chinese.com/

[jbradfor]

While I haven't tried that approach, it seems to me to be a bad idea.

Rather, there are websites dedicated to teaching pinyin that have audio-clips to show proper pronunciation. I seem to have lost my links to them, but I recall there was one from UC Berkeley I thought was good.