Chattersoft Program?

[WJT]

Information on www.chattersoft.com. click the tab at the top that says Products. I was thinking of ordering but thought it sounded a bit too good to be true. Has anyone heard of it or tried it?

[Gooliegumdrop]

Up until now I had never heard of this program, but it seems to me that it uses some kind of machine translation which DOESN'T work. So personally, I wouldn't touch it. As of yet machine translation software can only effectively translate very basic sentence structures, so they really are a waste of time.

As a translator myself, I can tell you that human translators are still very much in demand, and as yet have nothing to fear from such software. (Of course, this may not always be the case - but for now our jobs are safe!). The fact is that you risk a very high percentage of mistranslations from such software, so I can only assume that most of what you will be learning will be senseless gobbledegook. I personally feel that this program may be potentially harmful to the language learner, and feel you would be better off nvesting the money in one of the more renowned language programs commercially available.

Finally, despite what many language courses claim, for most of us there really is no fast and easy way to become proficient in a foreign language. It takes a massive amount of motivation, many hours of study and practice, and a lot of perseverence and hard work. You may be an exception, however, if you're 5 years old or happen to have a record breaking IQ. Basically, if it sounds too good to be true - it is!

Julie.