Farlington Celebrates European Day of Languages

Farlington Senior School students marked the 20th European Day of Languages.

This is an initiative organised by the Council of Europe, based in Strasbourg, which promotes plurilingualism in the whole continent. Head of German, Fiona Sparkes conducted a fascinating assembly on the perils of Google Translate - a software program that knows lots of words and some grammatical rules but, unlike humans, has no understanding of context.

Think of the word bat, in English, for example. What first comes to mind? A flying mammal or a piece of cricket equipment? In English these are the same word and we rely on context to understand which.

So get off Google Translate, and use your brain (backed up by a good online dictionary like linguee.com and a verb conjugator such as verbix.com.)