Hairless Egyptian Cats
or
Les chats égyptiens glabres
or

or
GOOGLE TRANSLATE . . .
What Could Go Wrong?!

Yeah, no. Not really. Almost. Maybe. Maybe not … what? Really? Ah, the joys of using Google Translate!

Full Disclosure: I use the analog version of Google Translate during the summer for French Immersion (La Maison Française)! Basically, Corn Flakes French! Each side of a Corn Flakes box has English/French and … just get rid of the smallest words … and you have a PERFECT TRANSLATION! And a breakfast too!

DOUBLE Full Disclosure: I TOTALLY use Google Translate for reading blogs, and any other websites or languages, into English. Not perfect, often hilarous, but definitely readable! A good tool!

Google Translate is like the first line from Charles Dickens ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ – “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” and as famous as that line is, the next line is quite appropriate too, “it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness” and that can sometimes sum up technology too.

Just a brief search this morning on Google Translate bring up all kinds of different opinions – good, bad, indifferent. Not too much of a surprise there. GT is a useful tool in my opinion. Not to be completely or totally relied upon, but useful nonetheless.

Many years ago, I remember teaching a Beginner’s Computer Science course at night. And one topic was always how computers do the wrong thing. Apart from the discussion that computers only do what the programmer coded, the one actual event (apparently) was when a computer transation program was used at an Engineering Symposium and all of a sudden, the transcript included the term ‘Water Sheep‘. And it wasn’t wrong! It was a literal translation of … HYDRAULIC RAMS! It was right in a computer codey kind of way! Helpful? Not so much! LOL!

So, the title of this post will … kinda make sense, with the following Google Translation screen grabs! I made up a silly sentence:

“The hairless Egyptian Cats are on the roof
downloading FireFox for their Macbook laptops.“

Yeah, a bit silly, but useful! And the actual TITLE as used by WordPress, did not display the Japanese characters! Nor did it show them IN the body of this post! So how did I get them to appear? I used the Snipping tool to turn the text into an image! A trick is all!

And using Snipping, I was able to grab each Google Translate screen, going from English to French AND THEN BACK! Also English to Japanese AND THEN BACK!

So, not too bad! In fact, I double-checked with a colleague and the Japanese translation BACK to English was quite close to the original context.

AND, GT will translate ENTIRE WEBPAGES! Just copy and past the URL of the source language into the translation box, select English (or any language!) and GT will produce a clickable, bookmarkable URL for you to add to your Favourites! Very easy and useful!

Many blogs now add a Translation Widget, so link to the original blog, and then just choose the language Widget and it just works! Very cool!

And I just added it TO THIS BOG BLOG! I hadn’t even checked to see if it was here! AND IT IS! Learn something new each day! YAY! This feature will now be at the very top right hand corner on all posts. And my coffee buddy, Nik, can now read my blog in GREEK!

And there is also mobile device technology too! You can use your camera to translate languages on signs or menus!

Google Translate’s instant camera feature will now make translating a foreign street sign as easy as aiming your phone — even if your native language isn’t English ….. All told, there are 60 new languages in its list of supported languages for instant camera, including Arabic, Hindi, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese. This adds up to a grand total of 88 languages users can translate from by pointing their camera’s lens at the text.

That is actually amazing! Part Scanner. Part Google Translate. Part Dictionary. Part Internet. Part …. United Nations, all in the palm of your hand!