I think perfect machine translations are on many people’s top list of the dream future. I’m sure it has already come a long way since the beginning of development. However, at least between Japanese and English, the current state of machine translation is pretty bad. So please don’t use it!

For example, I tested one machine translation available online by entering “I have a mother”. If you have studied Lesson 2 of Essential Japanese, you should know how to say it in Japanese. What I got from the machine translation was: 私には母が持っている. Watashi ni wa haha ga motte iru. This doesn’t make sense at all! Okay, let me try translating this Japanese back into English.... it goes something like, “To me, my mother owns.” This English sentence doesn’t make sense, right?! My mother owns what?!

Okay, what about a really simple phrase like “Thank you”? The machine translation gives you only ありがとうございます Arigatoo gozaimasu. However, in Japanese there is also a past tense version of “Thank you”, which is ありがとうございました Arigatoo gozaimashita. This one is used when you thank for something that has been done to you, for example, you can say it to your teacher at the end of a lesson, or to your host when you leave a house party. Also the past tense version is the one to use when you write a Thank you letter.

Machine translations have trouble translating even simple phrases and sentences, like the ones taught in Essential Japanese. So you can imagine what happens when you try to translate Intermediate or Advanced level sentences...

Hopefully, machine translations will improve and give you much better results some time in the future, but until then, please, do not use machine translations!!