Building vocabulary is essential in learning a foreign language. Google Translate offers a fantastic tool called Phrasebook to help you build your vocabulary. Like most of its end-user products, Google Translate and Phrasebook are free. All you need is a Google account and a lot of hard work.
The Google Phrasebook comes as an empty box, which you have to fill in with the words and phrases you want to learn. Depending on the language, a basic vocabulary consists of at least a thousand words. To express your ideas fluently, you may want to exceed that number several times. Let’s go over how to use this tool and discuss its strengths and weaknesses.
When you open Google Translate, you will see the red sign in button in the upper right corner. You don’t need to sign in to use Google Translate, but the phrasebook requires you to sign in. If you don’t have a Google account yet, you can create one by clicking the red sign up button in the top right corner of the login page.
When you’re logged in, set your source and target languages from the dropdown buttons at the top of the translation text box. Google Translate does a good job of translating common words. The instant translation feature is enabled by default. All you have to do is type the word in the text box. The translation is displayed in the text box on the right hand side. If the word has multiple translations, Google displays them below the translation text box, grouped into word classes, such as verbs, nouns, and adjectives. When building vocabulary in a foreign language, it is beneficial to learn a few words about the same concept, especially from different word classes.
Add translations to your phrasebook
If you are satisfied with the translation and want to save it to your phrasebook, you need to click the star in the lower left corner of the translation text box. If more translations are displayed below the translation text box, you can also save any of those translations to your phrasebook. Just click on the translation you want to save. This will display it in the translation text box. You can then add it to your phrasebook by starring it. This way, you can add more than one translation of the same word or phrase to your phrasebook.
You can listen to the pronunciation of the word by clicking the speaker sign in the lower right corner of the translation text box. At the time of writing this article, the pronunciation gives an idea, but it is not always accurate. Therefore, it is not suggested to solely rely on Google Translate for pronunciation.
example sentences
If you press the rectangular speech bubble next to the speaker, some example sentences with the translated word will be displayed. These sentences come from trusted websites such as newspapers and magazines. You can display some sentences by clicking the arrows in the upper right corner of the text box. Saving a few sentences in your phrasebook would be a useful feature for building vocabulary in a foreign language. However, Google Translate does not have this functionality as of this writing.
If you click on the example sentence, its translation is displayed below. Translations of sentences and longer sentences give an idea about the meaning. However, as of this writing, it’s hard to say that the results are always grammatically correct and made up of the correct words. Therefore, for longer sentences, it is suggested not to rely solely on Google Translate and consult other sources as well.
Enter your own translations
One advantage of Google Translate is that it allows you to enter your own translations. This is especially useful if you are not satisfied with the proposed translation and want to save another one to your phrasebook. To do so, click on the word or phrase in the translation text box, enter your own translation in the dialog, and click the use button. The selected translation will be replaced with your own translation, which you can star to save to your phrasebook. That way, you can build vocabulary by also saving words and phrases from other sources.
You can access your phrasebook by clicking the phrasebook button in the top right corner. The phrasebook button has a book with a star on the cover. You can search your phrasebook with the search box above. You can listen to the pronunciation of words and phrases. You can filter your sentences based on language pairs. You can also sort them by date added or alphabetically. You can remove any of the translations by selecting its checkbox and clicking the trash can. You can edit them by clicking on a line. That displays the translation in the text boxes, where you can edit them and save them to your phrasebook again.
Download and print your phrasebook
The phrasebook export functionality allows you to use your phrasebook outside of Google Translate. This is a fantastic feature, because you can download your phrasebook, print it, and study it anywhere and anytime you want. On the top row of the phrasebook, there is a button with a grid. Click that button to export your phrasebook to Google Sheets, the spreadsheet app for Google Docs. When your phrasebook opens in Google Sheets, you can edit, print, or download it. To print, simply click the Print button in the upper left corner. You can download it by clicking the file menu (top left), select download and select one of the file types. You can download your phrasebook as an Excel file, as a pdf, as a plain text file, or any of the other available file types.
Google Translate has its strengths and weaknesses. However, its phrasebook functionality is a fantastic tool for language learners to build vocabulary. It’s up to you to do the work of filling this tool with all the words and phrases you want to learn. However, this convenient tool makes it very efficient to create and maintain a vocabulary database for language learners.
