Sprechen Sie Google? A New Web Translator
Star Trek's handheld tricorder device could scan new life-forms, analyze data and communicate with aliens. It's one of sci-fi's greatest fictional gadgets, and now Google is taking us one step closer to living the Gene Roddenberry dream. The company's newest app, available to the public on May 6, provides near perfect translation of foreign text after you snap a photo of it with your smart phone.
Companies have been tinkering with electronic pocket translators for years, but these devices generally involve a lot of typing — and a lot of griping about their limited vocabularies. Likewise, low-tech alternatives like the illustration-intensive Me No Speak books get you only so far. (See the top iPhone applications.)
To create something that's really versatile, Google's new software builds on two pre-existing apps: Goggles, which launched in December for Android phones and is coming to the iPhone this year, is essentially a visual search engine. Take a photo of any landmark, sign, book or bar code, and Google will scour its vast database and within seconds pull up links to the image, whether it's the history of the church you just photographed or reviews of the hotel you're standing in front of. The other app, called Translate, has been around since 2008 and translates words you've typed on your smart phone into one of 52 languages. By combining these apps in a single (if clunkily named) entity, Goggles Translate lets travelers simply take a pic of the words that need translating. No more hunting and pecking on tiny keyboards.
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