This damn tech is making it even harder to learn German
Google have just rolled out a major new 'augmented reality' update to their iPhone and Android translate apps which includes real time, character recognition which will even work (to a degree) without a data connection.
They bought a company that produced an App called Word Lens, and they have now incorporated that functionality into Google translate. The word lens app worked offline, you just had to install the relevant languages before going offline.
Google translate also allows you to download languages so that you can work offline (even prior to this update).
Yeah, it's just more bells and whistles, while underneath it's really not very good at all. I mean, sure, it usually manages to convey at least a vague sense of the original, but quite often it still produces unmitigated garbage as a result.
And in French
Ouais, ce est juste plus de cloches et de sifflets, tandis qu'au-dessous il est vraiment pas très bon du tout. Je veux dire, bien sûr, il gère habituellement de transmettre au moins un vague sentiment de l'original, mais bien souvent, il produit encore des ordures atténués à la suite.
And German
Ja, es ist nur mehr Schnickschnack, während unterhalb es ist wirklich nicht sehr gut. Ich meine, sicher, es in der Regel schafft es zumindest eine vage Gefühl der ursprünglichen vermitteln, aber oft immer noch produziert ungemilderte Müll als Ergebnis.
Good, eh?
Just tried this. It's insane.
It's not meant for long prose of text and it says as much. But for the few signs I've tried it with it's been amazing.
Well it depends of course of how you are writing the original language to be translated into french. You can't just put what you want and expect it to convey the same meaning. I use the translator as a go over to what I wrote. And it is 100 percent accurate. If I write my English in a way that is understandable in my own way it comes our like what you just provided. ..weird.
I have world lens and its useful to get the gist of signs in a country were you dont speak the language
Shame that the offline languages are not available for iphones
Leo translations are of much higher quality than google for whole sentences or texts. But the usability of google translate is clearly better.
- "The pen of my aunt is on the table".
- "The monkey is in the tree".
Theres a lesser known feature of the google translate app (at least on android but I *think* it works on iphone) where you can get it to listen simultaneously for two languages and it translates what it hears. So two people with no common language can sit with the phone between them and have a (stilted but usable) conversation. Closest thing yet to a babel fish.
It needs to be online though, even if you download the language pack it won't work offline.
The actual translations are still crap, though.
You just have to touch the mike icon to start, then at the bottom of the screen it shows your two selected languages, with a mike in between. Retouch this mike icon and chat away.