Google Translate works offline now

Over the past year the Google Translate team has been really busy adding cool new features (see previous post on Google Translate). Two of the most recent additions are a phrasebook on the website (add entries via favoriting) and offline dictionaries/databases. Downloading languages does take some time, though: my German language base took about 20 minutes (160 mb). Moreover, the sizes of the language bases might not be suitable for some older phones with little memory.

Having your languages available offline is a huge relief on trips abroad when online access might not be available or expensive due to roaming costs. Plus, it can save you money otherwise spent on expensive dictionary apps. Furthermore, it comes in handy at schools that do not provide wi-fi access for their students.

Google Translate is one of the preferred digital dictionaries of my students. Even though most foreign language teachers feel strongly against it, I think that this does not justice to Google Translate. While you can't expect it to deliver syntactically correct translations, it does quite a good job as dictionary as it provides several translation options. What is more, when it comes to expressions frequently used in conjunction (phrasal verbs, collocations, proverbs and sayings) Google Translate is often more helpful than a dictionary which might have no entry.

One thing that is still less than ideal: the phrasebooks on the website and and on the mobile app do not sync. This makes using a phrasebook less useful than it could be. Ideally the phrasebooks would be synced via a Google Spreadsheet in Google Drive. This would have several advantages: editable phrasebooks, sorting  and organizing phrases and finally exporting the phrases to various shareable formats (e.g. .csv), which could be used for flashcard trainer apps and quizzes in an LMS.

Google’s Christmas Marathon

Google has updated the majority of its services and mobile apps in the past couple of weeks - it almost seems Google wanted to make Christmas presents to all of its users. Even though not all services (like the music identification feature in Google Search) can be enjoyed everywhere in the world, there are plenty of new nice features for everyone. Here are my favourites:

Mobile apps:

• Calendar app: finally Google has come up with a calendar app people really want to use
• YouTube app: remote control addition for Google TV/PC
• Google Drive: much improved editing of spreadsheets
• Gmail app: swipe and pinch features adding more user friendliness
• Currents: the magazine app is now a real competitor for the like of Flipboard
• Google Earth: new 3d tours
• Google Play Books: read aloud, dictionary, translation and notes (finally a competitor to the likes of the Kindle app and iBooks)
• Google Now: lets you know how much exercise (walking, running, cycling) you have done (though this one probably still needs a lot of improvement it has a potential to decrease obesity)
• Android camera: addition of photospheres (360 panoramic images); here is a Christmassy example
• Google+ app: user interface improvement to an already excellent app; addition of communities and photospheres

The web and the cloud

• YouTube: create slideshows from uploaded/imported (Picasa, Google+) photos
• Chrome: Save to Drive from the web (images, texts)  addon for the Chrome Browser
• Google Drive: improved Google Presentations/Slides (as it is called on my Chromebook) with a very handy presentation mode; integration of third party webapps
• Gmail: attach files from Google Drive (up to 10GB - this one is a real killer feature)
• Google+: communities: even though you can create communities with circles, this one comes more naturally

To heighten the Christmas spirit, Google has furthermore created its own Santa Tracker, both as a web app and as a mobile app:
http://www.google.com/santatracker/
Google Play Link

To mind Google has more than deserved the title of most innovative tech company awarded by The Economist (both in 2011 and in 2012).

I would like to finish my Christmas post with a “Happy Christmas to everyone!”

In praise of (the improved) Google Translate

Foreign language teachers all over the world have been warning students not to use Google Translate for most of its existence. And for most of the time students have been ignoring their teachers’ warnings. By now it should be clear that Google Translate is a great product if it is used with care and if you are aware of potential pitfalls. (As this is just as true for traditional dictionaries, I have usually been using one or two lessons for dictionary work with each class).

Google Translate works similar to the human brain: it learns and abstracts from a huge amount of real life data. This means, it learns and improves its performance slowly over time. As laughable Google Translate results might have been a few years ago so impressive they are often by now. Of course, it will not be hard to find some ridiculous translations even now in particular when it comes to correct grammar. However, if you are aware of the service’s strength and weaknesses you have got an awesome tool at your fingertips. 

The more common an expression occurs on the web and in real life the more accurate the service tends to be. 

You can judge the reliability of a translation by making a ranking of linguistic elements:

1. Common phrases (e.g. How are you?)
2. Fixed expressions, proverbs, etc. (e.g. easy as pie)

Need a native speaker? Ask Google x 2!

Ingredients:

• Google translate
• Google search and/or ngram viewer

Both teachers and learners of foreign languages often wish they had a native speaker at hand. While that wish frequently doesn’t come true, Google can be a serious substitute for a native speaker time and again.

Google browser tools for language learners

Some Google tools come in quite handy for foreign language learners. I use Google Chrome, even so the following tips should work equally well with Firefox. 

Google translate

Install Google translate browser plug-in and you can get instant translation of any webpage with a mouse click. You can configure which languages you want to use. Google translate is anything but perfect but when it comes to machine translation there is probably no better tool (not even among paid ones).

Google dictionary plug-in

Much more useful than google translate is Google dictionary for language learners. If you install the plug-in all you need to do is double click an unknown word and you get a call-out telling you the meaning of the word and its pronunciation (audio).