Understanding Korean Texts with Google Translate

I had been wanting to learn Korean language since last year, but never did I have sufficient time to sit and take it seriously. But I do know how to read the Korean characters at least and romanize them as close as to how it is pronounced in Korean. Romanization is the way you transliterate a foreign text to a readable roman letters.

One method I am using to get familiar with Korean language is to watch TV shows and movies in this language, with subtitles of course. Most of the time though the subtitles are not good enough for they are poor translations. This could be due to the fact that the translators are not fluent in English but fluent in Korean. If not for the accompanied actions and emotions of the actors in the story I may not have grasped the real meaning of those foreign lines, and may have not got familiar with the basic Korean words and phrases.

Also, if I have time, I get Korean song lyrics online and sing the songs. There's just one drawback on this--not all korean song lyrics online have English Translations. Although I can request for other people to translate songs for me in forums or in blogs or in Yahoo! Answers; what I just do is go to Google Translate, the Google language translator, and paste the Korean lyrics text there, and ask the tool to translate it for me to English. I know though this tool is not accurate, but at least it provides me an idea of what the song really meant.

If you are like me who wants to learn a foreign language, and you have more time than me, you can visit websites that offer free online courses. You can buy self-study audio books or interactive foreign-language learning softwares. But if not, you can try what I do like watching shows and singing foreign songs.

Then you can use Google Translate once in a while. Remember that if you use this tool, you should paste the original foreign texts in the box and not just mere romanized texts. And, however convenient it is using this language tool, don't be too dependent to Google translator. Machine translators most of the time don't include syntax, grammar, word choice, collocations, idioms, loanwords, etc.It is still best to learn the language from native speakers and immersing yourself to their community.