6 ms·

I recently vacationed in Japan, and I found that using Google Translate on the phone wasn't practical because the other person would have no clue what was going

I recently vacationed in Japan, and I found that using Google Translate on the phone wasn't practical because the other person would have no clue what was going on or how they are supposed to work with the app. The language auto-detect was abysmal; half the time it thought Japanese was English. They would start responding to the translated statement before the app played the chime, and I'd have to rudely interrupt them and fumble with the app to get it to start listening again. They were never sure when it was "okay" to start talking again. In the end I tended to communicate everything I really needed by holding up the number of things I wanted on my fingers and pointing and smiling, caveman-style. They would usually know just enough English to say, "Two? Ok." Then the price of whatever I was buying would show up on the register surrounded by mystery Japanese characters, but the numbers were Western Arabic, so that was all I needed to know. One thing I learned is that you can get by with very little knowledge of the local language to successfully travel and eat.

missosoup 7y ago
I had the opposite experience. Everyone I tried to communicate with via google translate responded positively except one disgruntled train station attendant. I would say excuse me, I don't speak Japanese can you please help me. And then I'd show them my phone with the translated version of whatever my query is and then press the mic button and they'd get the point that they can speak now. Worked great.
- j88439h84 7y ago
  That's a nice workflow.
- noja 7y ago
  Did it work for a conversation, rather than a question and answer?
  - missosoup 7y ago
    For face-to-face it wasn't great because speech recognition is error prone. Usually I would always type and the person I'm interacting with would speak and if they saw the text was wrong they'd run it again. For chatting over sms/whatever it was great. Enough to have complex conversations and get to know people that I couldn't possibly communicate with otherwise. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than nothing if you aren't proficient in the local language. Also your mileage will vary by language. English-Japanese seems to be a pretty good combination. English-Chinese and English-Russian are a lot more flaky.
- ubercow13 7y ago
  You can also enable the appropriate keyboard on your phone before travelling. Most people can type in their native language on a smartphone. In my experience many people already have their own translation app on their phone which they are often happy to use to reply to you, too.
  - Thorrez 7y ago
    Yeah, but most people are faster at talking than at typing on a smartphone.
    - ubercow13 7y ago
      In my experience the whole thing works better with people typing. Firstly voice recognition isn’t perfect. The person has to check what they say was transcribed correctly and can’t correct it with a keyboard if they see it’s wrong the first time, they have to just try again. Typing means people go a bit more slowly and think about what they are writing, sometimes reworking sentences to be clearer. Also if they are typing in front of your face, the translation constantly updates based on the partial sentence they’ve typed and this can be quite revealing, which is useful if the final translation isn’t crystal clear.
- jki275 7y ago
  Google translate is pretty universally used in Japan to communicate. Generally written, not spoken though.
starpilot 7y ago
For more childlike translation antics, there is the point it picture dictionary: http://www.graf-editions.de/en/pointit http://www.graf-editions.de/en/pointit
Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
There are specific translator hardware like Travis Translator[1] which could resolve the awkward input issues, I wonder whether they could stand up-to Google’s translation prowess. [1]https://www.travistranslator.com/product-category/translators/ https://www.travistranslator.com/product-category/translator...
oxplot 7y ago
This is different. I just tried it and the assistant translation isn't turn based. It auto detects the language after each pause and translates it to the other language. No chimes either. Just talk normally as you would.
LastZactionHero 7y ago
Japanese is really difficult to translate. There's so much unstated context, totally different sentence structure, concepts that don't exist in English. I use Google Translate a lot with Japanese, but more to check my work. I'm not sure it could even really work with this kind of interface (sentence a in -> sentence b out). Check out jisho.org- it will translate and call out sentence structure, and is clearer about assumptions. I almost wish Google Translate provided a confidence measure.

missosoup 7y ago

I had the opposite experience. Everyone I tried to communicate with via google translate responded positively except one disgruntled train station attendant. I would say excuse me, I don't speak Japanese can you please help me. And then I'd show them my phone with the translated version of whatever my query is and then press the mic button and they'd get the point that they can speak now. Worked great.

j88439h84 7y ago
That's a nice workflow.
noja 7y ago
Did it work for a conversation, rather than a question and answer?
- missosoup 7y ago
  For face-to-face it wasn't great because speech recognition is error prone. Usually I would always type and the person I'm interacting with would speak and if they saw the text was wrong they'd run it again. For chatting over sms/whatever it was great. Enough to have complex conversations and get to know people that I couldn't possibly communicate with otherwise. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than nothing if you aren't proficient in the local language. Also your mileage will vary by language. English-Japanese seems to be a pretty good combination. English-Chinese and English-Russian are a lot more flaky.
ubercow13 7y ago
You can also enable the appropriate keyboard on your phone before travelling. Most people can type in their native language on a smartphone. In my experience many people already have their own translation app on their phone which they are often happy to use to reply to you, too.
- Thorrez 7y ago
  Yeah, but most people are faster at talking than at typing on a smartphone.
  - ubercow13 7y ago
    In my experience the whole thing works better with people typing. Firstly voice recognition isn’t perfect. The person has to check what they say was transcribed correctly and can’t correct it with a keyboard if they see it’s wrong the first time, they have to just try again. Typing means people go a bit more slowly and think about what they are writing, sometimes reworking sentences to be clearer. Also if they are typing in front of your face, the translation constantly updates based on the partial sentence they’ve typed and this can be quite revealing, which is useful if the final translation isn’t crystal clear.
jki275 7y ago
Google translate is pretty universally used in Japan to communicate. Generally written, not spoken though.

starpilot 7y ago

For more childlike translation antics, there is the point it picture dictionary: http://www.graf-editions.de/en/pointit http://www.graf-editions.de/en/pointit

Abishek_Muthian 7y ago

There are specific translator hardware like Travis Translator[1] which could resolve the awkward input issues, I wonder whether they could stand up-to Google’s translation prowess. [1]https://www.travistranslator.com/product-category/translators/ https://www.travistranslator.com/product-category/translator...

oxplot 7y ago

This is different. I just tried it and the assistant translation isn't turn based. It auto detects the language after each pause and translates it to the other language. No chimes either. Just talk normally as you would.

LastZactionHero 7y ago

Japanese is really difficult to translate. There's so much unstated context, totally different sentence structure, concepts that don't exist in English. I use Google Translate a lot with Japanese, but more to check my work. I'm not sure it could even really work with this kind of interface (sentence a in -> sentence b out). Check out jisho.org- it will translate and call out sentence structure, and is clearer about assumptions. I almost wish Google Translate provided a confidence measure.