Has anyone tried using google translate for beginner lessons? I find the translations quite good.
Yea, I actually use google translate for every single beginner lesson in German that I’m working on (Vera’s lessons), and I also find it useful, though it often does sometimes translate incorrectly. So, I supplement it with a German-English dictionary on my Mac (and that’s also to find the meanings of specific words). I admit that LingQ is the superior way to do this, but I have intermittent internet access, so it’s how I keep studying even when away from the net (by downloading lesson mp3s and texts).
Interesting. Which German-English dictionary are you using?
for me, google translation comes in handy. it mostly translates short sentences correctly. i highly recommend it to everyone who begins to learn a new language on this site using this method, espacially those who start from scratch.
This is the dictionary that I use (it’s free from Mac for Mac users):
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/home_learning/beolingusgermanenglishdictionaryplugin_wolfgangreszel.html
when using any automatic translating I recommand to translate back the result of first translation - if you do not get back first text there is probably something wrong with the translation
In my opinion Google translate is not a really helpful tool for Russian beginner lessons. In many cases the translation proposed by Google is not accurate at all, and makes no sense. I translate from Russian to German and Spanish and for this I prefer ABBYY Lingvo online, even if it’s not connected to the lingq window as it is with Google Translate. Another very good option are the Online dictionaries:
http://www.rambler.ru/dict/ and
http://deru.dict.cc/
for English <> Russian translation I use ABBYY Lingvo (I have a licensed copy) and multitran.ru I found multitran.ru is the best option. Although it can’t be linked to LingQ…
And about Google translate… Perhaps we should just translate every phrase from beginners lessons by Google translate and then suggest a better translations…
I use Babelfish. Nice light-weight Firefox add-on. Just set the language, right click a word and hit translate. I’m incredibly impressed how accurate the French translations come out in English.
Best of all, it’s completely free. 
Chinese translations can be a bit funny if you try a whole sentence. But mostly good.