

Google Translate for Animals - matkem
http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/translateforanimals/

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msg
There is a demo video! Hilarious.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I24bSteJpw>

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psawaya
I highly recommend watching it in TEXTp.

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djehuty
Already April 1st in the UK.

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leif
Today is the best day of the year.

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gr366
Could somebody with an Android phone please determine whether they went all
the way through with building an Android app? It appears you can only search
the marketplace from a handset.

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dpig
They really did build an app: Cat to English - "Why can't they call it a door,
I mean cat flap is so degrading"

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araneae
Hey, that's what my cat said too! And we don't even have a cat flap, she's
indoor only. Something seems fishy...

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matkem
or... catty?

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gojomo
Dr. Goolittle?

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sfalbo
It looks like Google is already keeping up with their April Fool's Day
tradition...

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100k
I loved Dr. Doolittle when I was a kid so this brought a smile to my face.

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daleharvey
today is going to be an easy day to ignore the distraction of the internet

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KC8ZKF
Don't believe a word the sheep say. They're all liars.

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Scott_MacGregor
This made my day. LOL, how cute.

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Roridge
Google n. a company that never lets you down today ^_^

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ld50
What's even funnier about it is that animals do indeed use sound to
communicate and that this application is both theoretically and technically
feasible.

Animals do not emit sounds for the sake of emitting sounds, they do so with
specific intentions, desires, and goals, and as a result of specific systems
that have developed towards the end of a complex system of communication
involving vocal and auditory mechanisms, sound waves, and cognitive elements
giving the capacity to process and generate these patterns of sound.

It's funny to me because I know that some people would look at this
application and think of it as a hilarious joke: "Understand animal sounds? Ha
Ha Ha good one Google! As if! Chinese Room! Hurf Durf! IMPOSSIBLE!"

It's also funny to me because I know that some hackers will look at this and
be inspired to spend their spare cycles researching and developing this
application, and wind up making a small fortune when they put it on the app
store.

It's also funny to me because I suspect that some crafty googlers have already
done this and are using the video and google's reputation for funny April
Fools Day Jokes as a viral marketing tactic for their April Fool's Day Day-
After joke, where they release the fully functional application, having
developed it during their allocated "pet project" time.

Good one Google!

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cake
Animal communication is definitely very complex. They all have their own
language and it's often not just oral.

I've read an interesting theory that cats meow a lot at us humans because they
see that we don't perceive their body language well enough. Out of frustration
and because they see and hear that we speak a lot they adapt.

We're not to the point where we are able to translate live human communication
smoothly. Even contextual text translation is terrible (Google translate).

I guess we're a long way from being able to translate animal communication
effectively but I think it's a very intersting subject.

