Why is it that when I try to find out a word in a different language?

Why is it that when I try to find out a word in a different language, say like Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Swahili etc, I get told different things from different websites. How am I suppose to know which one is write. I could look at translators and they'd both give me a different answer or even see what people who natively speak the language say and I'd get completely different answers from them.





So how am I suppose to know what the correct word is and why does this happen?|||Use a printed dictionary instead of a web site. A good one witll not only give you alternative answers but explain what precisely each means, so you can choose the one best suited to the meaning you had in mind..|||Because language is never 100% cookie-cutter, interchangeable.





You would know which one to write by having some grasp of the language in question and the context in which the word is placed alongside the nature of the non-English language in question.





If you have no grasp of it, you should not bother. That's exactly why "translators" should never be used in place of a real human that knows the language. Machines cannot grasp creativity, idiomatic speech, slang, etc. There is no substitute for learning.|||Like everyone said, there is no single correct word.





In the English language alone--your native tongue, the language you are most versed in--it's hard to be eloquent. You need to realize that language is also an extension of a culture.





Learning the language has 3 factors: grammar, vocabulary, culture.





You can learn all the words and know how to make any sentence but in the same way some words are used differently because of cultural references.





Wordplay and figures of speech affect the meaning of words. For example the word "******" being a derogatory term for homosexuals in the U.S. but originating from Britain which never used it that way. It actually means "bundle of sticks".





In the same way, a language may favor a word. In my country, there are at least 5 separate words for "rice", and we have no word for "snow" since we're a tropical country.








To know the correct word you need to learn a culture more.


A lot of research and study is involved.|||Some are synonyms and some differences are the result of ignorance or misunderstanding. You really can't tell which ones are right unless you study the language in depth, or develop trusted sources such as dictionaries or well-educated native speakers. Online translators or websites like Wiktionary are highly unreliable, and yet we constantly see them posted as sources here.|||In many cases there is no single "correct" translation for a word, and you have to provide the _correct context_. And even then you can have synonyms. That's where a good dictionary or a good answerer will prove useful by giving clear example sentences.|||Languages are not so interchangeable. Try a printed dictionary as it should give you more than one word|||there is often NO single correct word -- nor does it correspond to an English word. Word-use is not so simple.