Blog 2: Google Camera Translate...Say What???

-
This week I found another alert article on the tech tool Google Translate. This tool that I thought was already pretty awesome just got even more awesome! The article is about how Google Translate has added 13 more languages to join the 26 that they already had. Before finding this article I didn't even know that Google Translate had this feature. I had read before that the new Google Glasses would be able to automatically translate street signs, menus etc. but I didn't know that we could already do this with our App on our phones.

I only got half way through reading the article when I had to give it a try for myself. It is surprisingly extremely easy to use. You simply choose the camera option, point the camera to words that you want to be translated and like magic it translates them automatically on your phone screen! My husband and I had a great time holding up our even snack's nutrition label to pointing to my computer screen. This is really an amazing tool that I wish I had known about before, but am so happy to discover it. I am going to immediately begin using this with my ESL students. I can see that they can now navigate Google Classroom or really any item on our Chromebooks that we are looking at. Students can also point their cameras at a worksheet for it to be instantly translated! What is even cooler is that students could write in their native language and I can use my Camera Translator to see their answers.

Check out the article to see a video of how it works but I also greatly urge you to give the Camera in the Google Translate App a try.

Comments

  1. Special Ed. On WheelsOctober 13, 2018 at 9:13 AM

    Hi Amber, I've tried that trick with Google translate and loved it! It would really come in handy when traveling. I also just read about the new Pixel earbuds from Google. https://store.google.com/sg/product/google_pixel_buds They will actually translate live speech, can you imagine! That is just crazy. For $159 you can have your own personal translator that will help you understand anyone you talk to, the future is now, unbelievable...

    ReplyDelete
  2. RobHudakOctober 13, 2018 at 7:54 PM

    I just read about this recently as well. This would be a great tool to use in the classroom with our ESL students. It is quick and easy, and it can also be very beneficial for us as well. I often get emails or notes in Spanish that I cannot translate so this would be helpful for me. Thank you for sharing.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog 5: English=Science

-
I was a bit nervous trying to find an article about technology and language from my Google alerts this week, but eventually, this one popped up providing a really interesting topic to share. In this weeks alert, I discovered that English is a scientific language and not only that but it is the most common and preferred scientific language! So what does that mean? Well, anyone in any country that is studying things like AI needs to know English so that they can communicate across borders with others.  The article goes on to state how this gives any native English speaking countries an advantage when it comes to these scientific studies because other countries not only have to concentrate on what they are studying but also learn or use English to communicate. It was also really interesting that they stated there is a correlation between a country's English proficiency and scientific innovation.  Before reading this article I didn't even know that there were scientific lan
Read more

Blog 3: MemoQ and Augmented Translation

-
So this week's Google Alert article continues with the same idea as last weeks article on an update to Google translate. Before reading this article this week I didn't know that the update to the current Google Translate application is called augmented translation. I have explored augmented reality in other courses and it is really neat. Well, that is exactly what the translation app is doing it is augmenting the real words to the translated words on your screen! I am clearly still amazed by this awesome technology. Anyways, this weeks article is specifically about MemoQ a translation software company and how they feel augmented translation can change a business but also how humans are involved with this as well. They mention how augmented reality ultimately can save companies valuable time and who doesn't need extra time? I found it interesting though that they comment on how even though this is some state of the art technology that should be great it, that is all based
Read more