
Introducing the Google Translate app for iPhone - atularora
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/introducing-google-translate-app-for.html
======
fredoliveira
I find it insane that we've come to a point when speaking to a machine gives
you the ability to translate what you just said to a different language
immediately. Sure, the pieces were all out there already, but the combination
of all of them in one package is non-trivial. We've come a long way.

Much like Louis C.K. would say about flying: "people complain about not having
wifi on a plane, but they're flying through the air, sitting in a f*cking
chair"

~~~
cryptoz
"You're sitting in a chair. IN THE SKY!" and paraphrasing... "Are you not
amazed you're partaking in the miracle of human flight, you non-contibuting
ZERO?"

------
dstein
This is ridiculously awesome. I have had a lot of fun hacking the google
translate API before, but this wraps everything up in a sweet interface.

But it's too bad that Google is strapping everybody down to their services
like this. The Google API shuts you down after too many requests per second.
For this stuff to really take off what we need is this technology to be build
right into the web browser, and have a JavaScript API for control over the
translation and TTS engine.

------
ylem
I think it's cool. I played with it for Android (not the voice input, but the
text based input and the voice output). I was with a Russian and Turkish
colleague (I speak American English). We found that the translation was pretty
good--but that the speech synthesis was pretty bad for both Turkish and
Russian. Has anyone checked it out for Chinese, Japanese, or Spanish?

~~~
jrnkntl
I just tried it for Dutch, and it got one out of the ten 5-word sentences I
tried, correct. Some sentences only got one word right, and I sure was
articulating like they do on national television ;) They just got a much
greater sample size for English, matter of time for the rest of the languages
I hope.

~~~
draz
"... and I sure was articulating like they do on national television" Not sure
what they trained their algorithm on, but this articulation might have been
the culprit. If they have a corpus of "normal people" speaking Dutch, and then
you go and articulate, you will get poor results.

------
axiom
So, you do realize that once you can fit something like this in your ear you
have a bona-fide Star Trek universal translator.

~~~
affiliator
Couple it with a tablet, load up wikipedia and you're ready to beam aboard any
passing Vogon spaceship.

~~~
InclinedPlane
I'd recommend bringing a solar powered battery charger (who solar powered?
because you can run it off nearly any light source, including artificial
lighting, which is more likely than trying to find a source of electrical
power that's compatible with your charger).

------
noinput
The speak feature really would have came in handy when I was in China for the
big earthquake in 2008. I thought I'd be ahead of the game and use g-translate
to pre-save some fullscreen images of phrases I wanted to use while I was
there. My favorite loss in translation moment was when I tried asking a Monk
if I may please take his picture, only to find out I was asking him if I might
take all of his personal pictures.

------
jawee
My own experience with the app on Android would have me warn you that speech
recognition is sub-par. English _generally_ works, but it is sketchy. Spanish
didn't work with me; I thought maybe it was my non-native accent, yet it
managed to fair worse when I had some native speakers try it. It couldn't
catch even basic phrases no matter how many times tried.

------
notyourwork
I find it amusing that google has an application that can translate from
language to language yet when I call <insert big name company>'s automated
system they cannot decipher what I am saying worth a damn.

~~~
jodrellblank
If the Google system is anything like the Youtube auto-transcribe feature or
the voicemail to text system, it can't really decipher what people are saying
worth a damn either. ;)

------
jamesshamenski
Any idea if 'speak to translate' will be coming to the API?
<http://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/overview.html>

------
Poiesis
Well, I exhausted my knowledge of Korean phrases by trying the (phonetic)
phrase "Anyong haseyo". I am as far from a native speaker as one can be.

I can't even describe how cool it was to see:

Hi 안녕하세요

------
andresmh
does this have the same functionality that the Android version had for a month
or so? It is still pretty amazing.

------
JacobIrwin
Google Translate app, please translate this for me to RoR:

"1,000,000 page views in 24 hours."

------
davisml
The star, listen and fullscreen buttons look awfully small

------
saturn
This is freaking awesome. Now all we need are sane roaming agreements between
carriers so we can actually use our iphones overseas ..

