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The conversation feature is pretty phenomenal, and comes close to a true Babelfish device. I just tried it with English<->Mandarin with my wife (we both speak f

The conversation feature is pretty phenomenal, and comes close to a true Babelfish device. I just tried it with English<->Mandarin with my wife (we both speak fluently), and works pretty accurately and is fast. I will definitely use this when traveling.

Someone1234 12y ago
Am I correct in assuming it requires a good fast internet connection to work at all? For example does it even work on 2G or is it WiFi only?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- zavi 12y ago
  It works offline.
  - ma2rten 12y ago
    Google put it's translation engine into the client? I doubt that.
    - cryptoz 12y ago
      They've been able to do offline voice-to-text, for English at least, for the last 1-2 years, so it's possible. But I would tend to agree...seems doubtful that they could have best-in-class real-time translations....offline, right?
      - rancur 12y ago
        and yet that never works for me. the offline bit
    - croddin 12y ago
      Yeah it looks like they did: • Word Lens: Just point your camera to a sign or text and the Translate app will instantly translate the text, even without Internet/data connection. Currently available in: English ↔ French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish. (From https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.translate&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... )
      - Mahn 12y ago
        That's amazing. Major kudos to the Google Translate team if it really does work fully offline.
        alextgordon 12y ago
        The live video translation was a startup that they acquired ("Word Lens"). It already worked offline so it would be strange if they had removed that feature. I doubt this implies that the Google translation engine has been ported to work offline.
        magicalist 12y ago
        It does and has for some time[1]. Just switch to airplane mode and try it before asserting this? You have to download the language packs first, but it works. [1] http://googletranslate.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-worlds-languages-in-your-pocket-no.html http://googletranslate.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-worlds-langu...
      - anonymousDan 12y ago
        Does anyone know of any equivalent open source systems for the word lens or audio translate apps? Or even what kind of algs they are using?
    - sbrother 12y ago
      The translation quality won't be (anywhere near) as good offline as online, but it works well enough for word lens to be useful without a data connection!
    - taejo 12y ago
      The "Google Translate" app has supported offline translation for "pinned" languages for a while now.
seszett 12y ago
It is really perfectible for French<->Mandarin at least. You actually have to translate both sentences into English to understand how they somewhat mean the same thing when taken literally (but that's just the same problem as on translate.google.com)
- pimlottc 12y ago
  > It is really perfectible for French<->Mandarin at least. You might prefer to say "imperfect" instead of "perfectible". While "perfectible" is a, well, perfectly good word, it is unusually rare enough that I thought you had meant to say "perfect" and made an error. "imperfect" is much more common and less likely to be misinterpreted. Apologies for the unsolicited criticism but I really was confused by this at first.
  - jessedhillon 12y ago
    Yeah, the similar English sentiment would be "it could be better" or "leaves a lot to be desired"
  - MarkPNeyer 12y ago
    it was the perfect word choice to illustrate translation difficulty
    - Florin_Andrei 12y ago
      True, but "really perfectible" sounds strange.
      - sfeng 12y ago
        That's his point
      - reacweb 12y ago
        It sounds strange in english. Saying "c'est perfectible" in french is correct and usual. It is translated by google translate into "This is perfectible". As usual, google translate is very poor.
fma 12y ago
I just tried English<->Mandarin with my wife...though not always grammatically correct, it gets the point across. For those who would use it while travelling abroad, keep it mind this requires an Internet connection. In China, you would need VPN since Google services are blocked.
- shittyanalogy 12y ago
  You can download the language for offline usage, at least in android
  - chris_overseas 12y ago
    That only works for the (amazing) WordLens functionality. Live audio translation still requires Google's cloud for processing.
    - agildehaus 12y ago
      WordLens works offline without any additional downloads, at least for the languages I tried (Spanish, French, English). Audio translation and TTS works offline if you have the proper languages downloaded, but being able to detect what language is being spoken seems to be an online-only feature.
- Wogef 12y ago
  Baidu translate works great in China and will translate anything you copy to the clipboard automatically. Requires the usual insane Chinese app permissions so Xprivacy or something similar is a must.
  - Kiro 12y ago
    But Baidu doesn't have the Babelfish.
kennyledet 12y ago
> The conversation feature is pretty phenomenal, Yeah, it is. I had pretty much the same idea a few years back, and called it "SpaceChat". I ended up dropping the project because I was too busy with other things. Smh.

Someone1234 12y ago

Am I correct in assuming it requires a good fast internet connection to work at all? For example does it even work on 2G or is it WiFi only?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
zavi 12y ago
It works offline.
- ma2rten 12y ago
  Google put it's translation engine into the client? I doubt that.
  - cryptoz 12y ago
    They've been able to do offline voice-to-text, for English at least, for the last 1-2 years, so it's possible. But I would tend to agree...seems doubtful that they could have best-in-class real-time translations....offline, right?
    - rancur 12y ago
      and yet that never works for me. the offline bit
  - croddin 12y ago
    Yeah it looks like they did: • Word Lens: Just point your camera to a sign or text and the Translate app will instantly translate the text, even without Internet/data connection. Currently available in: English ↔ French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish. (From https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.translate&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... )
    - Mahn 12y ago
      That's amazing. Major kudos to the Google Translate team if it really does work fully offline.
      - alextgordon 12y ago
        The live video translation was a startup that they acquired ("Word Lens"). It already worked offline so it would be strange if they had removed that feature. I doubt this implies that the Google translation engine has been ported to work offline.
        magicalist 12y ago
        It does and has for some time[1]. Just switch to airplane mode and try it before asserting this? You have to download the language packs first, but it works. [1] http://googletranslate.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-worlds-languages-in-your-pocket-no.html http://googletranslate.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-worlds-langu...
    - anonymousDan 12y ago
      Does anyone know of any equivalent open source systems for the word lens or audio translate apps? Or even what kind of algs they are using?
  - sbrother 12y ago
    The translation quality won't be (anywhere near) as good offline as online, but it works well enough for word lens to be useful without a data connection!
  - taejo 12y ago
    The "Google Translate" app has supported offline translation for "pinned" languages for a while now.

seszett 12y ago

It is really perfectible for French<->Mandarin at least. You actually have to translate both sentences into English to understand how they somewhat mean the same thing when taken literally (but that's just the same problem as on translate.google.com)

pimlottc 12y ago
> It is really perfectible for French<->Mandarin at least. You might prefer to say "imperfect" instead of "perfectible". While "perfectible" is a, well, perfectly good word, it is unusually rare enough that I thought you had meant to say "perfect" and made an error. "imperfect" is much more common and less likely to be misinterpreted. Apologies for the unsolicited criticism but I really was confused by this at first.
- jessedhillon 12y ago
  Yeah, the similar English sentiment would be "it could be better" or "leaves a lot to be desired"
- MarkPNeyer 12y ago
  it was the perfect word choice to illustrate translation difficulty
  - Florin_Andrei 12y ago
    True, but "really perfectible" sounds strange.
    - sfeng 12y ago
      That's his point
    - reacweb 12y ago
      It sounds strange in english. Saying "c'est perfectible" in french is correct and usual. It is translated by google translate into "This is perfectible". As usual, google translate is very poor.

fma 12y ago

I just tried English<->Mandarin with my wife...though not always grammatically correct, it gets the point across. For those who would use it while travelling abroad, keep it mind this requires an Internet connection. In China, you would need VPN since Google services are blocked.

shittyanalogy 12y ago
You can download the language for offline usage, at least in android
- chris_overseas 12y ago
  That only works for the (amazing) WordLens functionality. Live audio translation still requires Google's cloud for processing.
  - agildehaus 12y ago
    WordLens works offline without any additional downloads, at least for the languages I tried (Spanish, French, English). Audio translation and TTS works offline if you have the proper languages downloaded, but being able to detect what language is being spoken seems to be an online-only feature.
Wogef 12y ago
Baidu translate works great in China and will translate anything you copy to the clipboard automatically. Requires the usual insane Chinese app permissions so Xprivacy or something similar is a must.
- Kiro 12y ago
  But Baidu doesn't have the Babelfish.

kennyledet 12y ago

> The conversation feature is pretty phenomenal, Yeah, it is. I had pretty much the same idea a few years back, and called it "SpaceChat". I ended up dropping the project because I was too busy with other things. Smh.