An unofficial blog that watches Google's attempts to move your operating system online since 2005. Not affiliated with Google.

Send your tips to gostips@gmail.com.

September 28, 2010

Google Translate's Conversation Mode

Google has recently demoed a new feature that will make Google Translate a lot more useful: conversation mode. Instead of typing the text you want to translate, you can just speak it and Google will convert speech into text, translate the text and use text-to-speech to output the result. You can already do that if you install the Google Translate app from the Android Market. Conversation mode lets you quickly switch between two languages, so that two people can have a conversation even if they speak different languages.

"Google showed off a new application that translates conversations on Android mobiles at a recent conference in Germany. Google employees held a conversation over two Android mobiles with one person speaking German and the other English. The application worked its magic after each persons statement and then referred the translated message back to the other person," reported Simon Thomas.

Unfortunately, the results aren't always great. Google Translate's conversation mode will be released in a few months.



{ spotted by François Beaufort }

11 comments:

  1. Verbmobil was an early attempt to put together
    a system of this nature. It goes back a few decades:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbmobil

    ReplyDelete
  2. Automatically detecting language. How cool is that?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Microsoft demoed something very similar at TechFest in March...it worked surprisingly well:

    Microsoft's Translating Telephone
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFe7xVHMl_s

    ReplyDelete
  4. Stupid video. They should have included a picture in picture scene for the demonstration on the phone screen...

    ReplyDelete
  5. it doesn't detect language, you specify it explicitly.

    ReplyDelete
  6. you didn't wrote about:Google new
    http://www.google.com/newproducts/
    it will be nice if you will post about it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I think the demo messed up at the end. I believe the actual translation was:

    "Will you give me discount it I buy both? : Gibst du mir einen Rabatt, wenn ich beide kaufen?"
    "Zwanzig Prozent : Go $%#& yourself."

    At least that's what happens when I travel.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hell, even if the translation works only some of the time, this is still amazing, Star Trek-like stuff..

    ReplyDelete
  9. The Google Operating System blog posted a demonstration by Google of a new Google Translate feature. The feature will be available on Android phones in the next few months and it is named Google Translate Conversations. For more details you can visit my website softwaredevelopmentoutsourcing(dot)org and services-outsourcing(dot)org

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.