Google Translate was my go-to in my college Spanish class, because one of our assignments was to write an entire essay in Spanish. It was only a 200-level course, which is still pretty basic for languages, if you ask me. But based on my professor's feedback, Google Translate didn't totally ruin my essay.
For Japanese it's alright for checking individual words (even then it can be wrong), but man, it absolutely wrecks entire sentences. I can't blame it really, because the sentence subject or topic is so frequently context-sensitive in Japanese that there's no way for Google to guess what you're possibly referring to. Still, for fun, I just put each of my previous sentence practices through the translator to see what it spit out. I'll list the correct translation, then the Google one.
ここは静かですので、好きです。
It's quiet here, so I like it.
Because here is quiet, I like.
彼はかっこういいから、大好きだよ。
He's handsome, so I really like him.
Because he is cool, I love.
その本が欲しいけど、友達の。
I want that book, but it's my friend's.
But the book you want, friend.
ケーキは嫌いだけど、お菓子はすきだ。
I don't like cake, but I like candy.
I cake hate, candy likes.
きれいなのに、もう大嫌いだよ。
Even though you're pretty, I still hate you.
To clean, I've had hate.
この本は面白いのに・・・
Even though this book is interesting...
This book is interesting to ...
ですが犬は好きじゃないです。
But you don't like dogs.
But the dog is not like.
だから学校があまり好きじゃないね。
So that's why you don't like school very much, huh?
So it is not very like school.
Okay, so the first two sentences aren't terrible. It just gave a very literal translation due to the word order. Then it kinda goes downhill, because I don't think it can understand particles very well. It doesn't recognize の for possession relating to my friend. In the cake/candy sentence, it thinks "candy" is the subject for the second clause, when really it's just the topic. It also doesn't seem to know what のに is at all, yet it's alright with から and が somewhat for so and but. Anyway, I just thought it was neat to compare.
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