this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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[–] doodoo_wizard@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago

Eh, I think that’s a pretty bad use case.

A long time ago my high school Spanish textbook used excerpts from some novel we had all been forced to read in earlier grades as practice reading sections. After I got to the end of the second or third level, I went back to read the first parts and realized that in order to make the text appropriate for what early learners had under their belts the translation had taken some liberties recognizable even to a high school student with a weak grasp of the language.

Of course, there’s a good reason for that! Translation for the purposes of education is different from translation for the purposes of conveying the texts meaning.

So it would seem like a tool intended to translate a text that’s relatively difficult to read for native speakers into one easy to read to native speakers wouldn’t be the best option for language learners.

And rather than just go off that one experience, I can corroborate it with advice from language teachers to choose texts that aren’t above my own level.

So I don’t think it’s a good tool for a language learner.