This week I will explain how I use google translate to learn German. I recommend this method to people that are at the intermediate level with their language level.
While learning German I faced the dilemma that most of the books to learn this language have really boring text. I started to read some of them but I rarely arrived at the end.
Then I realized that it is better to read anything that you would read also in your native language because it interests you.
For articles:
I found out that the ZEIT has a lot of interesting articles, but they are not that easy for someone at the intermediate level and I do not like to stop reading a lot of times to check words on the dictionary. So I used google translate to have on one tab the original version of the article and on another tab the translated tab.
The nice thing about google translate is that when you point with the cursor one sentence of the translation the original version will appear.
For books I suggest you two methods.
First method: you can download the text of old books that are not anymore under copyright in your target language and then copy-paste the text in google translate. You will find many websites with a collection of books with no copyrights.
Second method: you can download the text of old books that are not anymore under copyright in both your target language and in English. Then, you can divide a Word document into two columns by creating a table with two large columns and copy and paste the text of the book in English and in your target language in each column. In this way, you made a bilingual parallel text. Happy reading!