Google translator

I have used the Google Translator program many times with quite good luck. And now it's getting better and better. Too bad it doesn't do too well with "Spanglish" or whatever language they ostensibly speak in Cuba. It sorta sounds like Spanish, but it's nearly impossible for me to grasp. 

Google Translate App Gets an Upgrade

The idea of a universal translator — a device that can seamlessly translate between languages — has been a longtime fixture in science fiction.

Technology hasn’t quite gotten there, even on Earth, but Google has come one step closer with an upgrade of the Google Translate application, which is being released on Wednesday.

The first part of the upgrade is a voice tool that makes it easier to have something resembling a natural conversation with a person using a different language by translating between two languages, using the microphone on a smartphone. Google Translate has had voice controls for a few years, but the latest version works more seamlessly.

In this version, the app is supposed to pick up who is talking based on the language being spoken. So, say you wanted to order a slice of chicken pizza in Spanish. Using the app, you could walk into a pizza parlor, and, with your lips at an awkward proximity to the phone’s microphone, make your request, after which a robotic voice would spit out the question in Spanish.

Then let’s say the guy behind the counter asks if you want extra cheese. He could ask you that question in Spanish, and the phone would relay it in English. Respond “Yes” or “No” in English, and out comes Spanish again.

The app isn’t quite as natural or seamless as science fiction just yet. In tests, it worked best with short, jargon-free sentences and required a healthy pause between translations. But it’s certainly a step forward, taking one more brick out of the language barrier. After all, even a personal translator would require a few seconds.

The second tool is a visual translator. People can place signs or other text in a phone’s viewfinder, similar to the way they take a picture, then receive an instantaneous translation on the screen. We tested it on Tuesday’s New York Times, as well as a pizza menu.

The tool allows users to place signs or other text in a phone’s viewfinder, similar to the way they take a picture, then receive an instantaneous translation on the phone’s screen.

If the idea of a visual scanner sounds familiar, it’s because the technology comes from Word Lens, an app developed by Quest Visual. Google acquired the company in May, with the intention of putting the technology into its own Translate app. Now that has happened.

Google is one of a number of companies trying to fulfill the promise of translation technology. Skype, Microsoft’s video calling service, recently announced a new feature that simultaneously translates calls between English and Spanish speakers.

Google has been doing some form of translation since 2001. The Google Translate app now has 90 languages and some 500 million monthly users. Barak Turovsky, the product leader for Google Translate, said that the app doled out about one billion translations a day and that 95 percent of the people who use Google’s translation technology — whether on a phone or desktop — live outside the United States. (Mr. Turovsky is a native Russian speaker who also speaks fluent Hebrew and English — his worst language, he said.)

Technologically speaking, Google Translate works similar to Google’s famous search engine. First it uses software to “crawl” the web in search of documents that have been translated between languages, then it performs a statistical analysis of likely translations.

For instance, if computer sees that the Spanish word perro has been translated to dog on millions of occasions and in varying contexts, it reasons that perro probably means dog, and in the process “learns” that word.

Original.