[shkkmo]

I had some Brazilian roomates who didn't speak english (and I don't speak portugues). We used a combination of my poor spanish and google translate off my phone to comunicate.

It worked ok (much better than nothing.) However there were a number of times when there were very large issues in the translations that created some pretty big misunderstandings. Luckily we had a friend who had fluent English and Portuguese who would translate when things got to confused.

To reduce errors, you do need to be really careful to use short, complete sentences with simple and correct grammar. It's also better to use and that contain words that aren't ambiguous. (Those two sentences would probably not translate well.)

e.g. Please write simple words, short phrases and simple phrases. Please write words with just one meaning. Those phrases and words are easier to translate.

[thaumasiotes]

> Please write words with just one meaning.

Those words are very rare and tend to only be useful in very technical contexts.

[shkkmo]

Fair enough. The idea that is intended to express is 'unambiguous'. I tend to try to avoid more obscure words when writing text for automatic translation, often at the expense of explicit accuracy.