Google Translate Review: A Global Language Translator on Your Phone Discussion

[Adama D. Brown]

The main principle behind Google Translate is simple enough: to enable fast, easy translation from one language to another, directly on a smartphone or tablet. The execution, however, is potentially tricky, since automatic translation by computers is notoriously prone to pitfalls. Google has also insisted on going a couple of steps further beyond standard text-to-speech (TTS), integrating voice recognition and transcription technologies in the bargain.

Google is aiming not just for a pocket phrasebook here, but a veritable personal United Nations (UN)  translator, with possible uses that include teaching yourself a foreign language, communicating in the local lingo while you're traveling, and finding out what the label on an imported product actually says, for instance. 

While Google Translate is also available for Apple iOS, I tried out the Android OS edition. In reviewing the app, I found the end result to be highly impressive, although Google Translate does contain one key weakness that could turn into a deal killer under certain circumstances.

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[Varjak]

I wouldn't expect the Shakespeare to work well. After all, it's 'version' of English that's almost as different from today's American and British English as Basque or Catalan would be from Castilian Spanish. Google could easily fix that by inputting all the works of Shakespeare and then cross-referencing them with good translations, which is essentially how Google translate works.

[Adama D. Brown]

I wouldn't expect the Shakespeare to work well. After all, it's 'version' of English that's almost as different from today's American and British English as Basque or Catalan would be from Castilian Spanish. Google could easily fix that by inputting all the works of Shakespeare and then cross-referencing them with good translations, which is essentially how Google translate works.

When putting it through, I restated it using modern words, so it actually worked quite well.

[Varjak]

That's not the same thing (and not what is printed in the review). If you inputted a 'translation' into modern English and then 'translated' that, than you have a translation of a translation. Not the same thing.

I wouldn't normally re-comment; but if you're going to comment that I'm 'wrong' about something not in the original review, I take that poorly. Sorry.

BTW, Henry V is one of my favorite plays.