Google launches Latin translation tool

Google Translate, a service that can instantly translate entire web pages or chunks of text in to another language, has added Latin to its list.
Google Translate supports more than 50 languages, including minority languages such as Welsh and Haitian Creole, and the addition of Latin is sure to please scholars and traditionalists.

In a blog post, written entirely in Latin, Jakob Uszkoreit, a senior engineer at Google, said that Latin was far from a “dead language”. “There are many Latin language learners,” he wrote. “Over 100,000 American students take the National Latin Exam every year and many more learn Latin all over the world. And there is a wealth of information originally written in it.”

He said that while Google recognised that the Latin translation tool would rarely be used to decipher emails or captions on YouTube videos, it would enable web users to read many of the crucially important philosophical and scientific texts originally written in this language. “There are tens of thousands of scanned books written in Latin on Google Books, and many more contain Latin quotes and proverbs,” he wrote.

Google expects translations to and from Latin to be among the most accurate offered by its Google Translate tool. “Unlike any of the other languages Google Translate supports, Latin offers a unique advantage: most of the text that will ever be written in Latin has already been written, and a comparatively large part of it has been translated in to other languages. “We use these translations, found in books and on the web, to train our system.”
Google has also added a Latin text-to-speech function, too, to help people with their pronunciation.

Question 1:[2 POINTS] Indicate whether the following statements are true or false and write down which part of the text justifies your answer.

a) Google Translate can be used to produce translations of stretches of language.
b) Only widely spoken languages are available on Google Translate.
c) The Google engineer wrote his message in American English.
d) There is no possibility of listening to Latin on Google Translation.

Question 2:[2 POINTS] Answer the following questions in your own words.

a) Is Latin studied these days?
b) Why will Google Latin translations be particularly reliable?

Question 3:[1.5 POINTS]Find words or phrases in the text that correspond in meaning to the words and definitions given.

a) To make happy (paragraph 1).
b) a large amount (paragraph 2).
c) extremely (paragraph 3).

Question 4:[1,5 POINTS] Complete the following sentences without changing the meaning.

a) Over 100,000 American students take the National Latin Exam every year and many more learn Latin all over the world.
The National Latin Exam …… and Latin ……

b) “What lessons do you have this morning, James?”
I asked James ……………………………………………………………

c) Many important philosophical and scientific texts were written in Latin People want to read these texts.
People want to read the

Question 5:[3 POINTS]Write a short essay (120 - 150 words) on the following topic:
‘Not everything that we have to study at school is useful.’ Do you agree?