Translation books and even phone applications can only carry you so far, as it has become tedious work trying to use them to navigate exactly what you’re looking for. However, Google has just released an epic update to their Translate for Android app on its one year anniversary. What’s epic about it? Conversation Mode.

What’s New With Google Translate?

As reported by Tech Crunch, most of the updates to that app pertain to the user interface, but Converstion Mode, while only in alpha, is very impressive.

It works exactly how you’d think it would, in a perfect world. You speak in one language into your phone, the app translates it for you, and it outputs the translation through your phone’s speaker. The person also has the opportunity to respond back into the phone, repeating the process from the other end.

To see this in action, here is a YouTube video of Google demoing the app on stage, taken from a conference in Berlin back in September. The demo starts roughly 26 mins & 24 seconds in:

More information about the update can be found on Google’s Mobile Blog. You can download the app on your Android device by using the bar scanner app to scan this QR Code:

Conclusion

The fact that this exists is amazing. As Google notes, the app is still in the very early stages, as they’ve experienced a few issues with background noise, accents, and other things you might expect, but all in all it looks like very good progress. I’m curious to see how this will wind up.

What do you think of the new Google Translate?

[Note]: Currently, the app only works in English and Spanish (sorry, rest of the world!)

Source: Tech Crunch

That said, there are some languages, such as French, where the translation is much more accurate. The translations can’t necessarily be trusted as being perfect, and often with languages where dialect or formal speech is an issue, Google Translate usually tends to get it wrong. The Google service still does come in pretty handy when translating emails, forum messages or even entire websites. But that’s not all that Google Translate is good for. You can push the limits of this tiny Google service and you’d be surprised at what you can get in return.

Beatbox

One of the most fun things to do with Google Translate to date has to be turning it into a beatbox. First posted on Reddit, the hidden feature that Google themselves probably never even imagined is making the internet rounds.

Paste the following text into Google Translate:

pv zk pv pv zk pv zk kz zk pv pv pv zk pv zk zk pzk pzk pvzkpvpvzk kkkkk bsch

Select German to German translation, and press Beatbox. Google has clearly embraced this discovery, replacing the Listen button with a Beatbox button.

For the ‘Techno’ version, select Chinese to Chinese Simplified/Traditional translation.

Create Sound Effects

Once beatboxing was discovered, it wasn’t long before people were trying to find other interesting sounds you can get out of Google Translate.

To simulate the sound of a machine, an old car, or possibly even a chainsaw, paste the following text into Google translate and select Croatian to Croatian translation.

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

To simulate the sound of a helicopter, the following text has been suggested when selecting German to German translation.

kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

Order Indian Food

According to Google’s Demo Slam, a website inviting people to demonstrate how they put Google’s services to use in their lives, two American girls were able to call an Indian restaurant and place their order in Hindi. Whether or not the video is genuine is something we’ll never know, but with a little knowledge of the language, it might just be possible.

Translate Twitter Messages Automatically

With the use of the awesome Firefox add-on Greasemonkey, and a little userscript, you can have any foreign language tweets on Twitter automatically translated from whichever language they were originally written in. This is something that is actually currently being rolled out to all Twitter accounts, but until then, Firefox users can benefit from the free work around.

The script has its quirks, and sometimes translates English tweets if they contain a name that can be mistaken for a foreign language.

Chat with Friends in Any Language

Using the Google Talk chat bots you can have any text instantly translated when using Google Talk. There are two methods you can use – either add the bot to your friend’s list and simply type the text you want translated in a chat conversation with the bota.

Even more conveniently, you can add the bot to your conversation, to have all text translated immediately as you chat.

What creative uses for Google Translate can you come up with? Let us know in the comments.

Image credit: Shutterstock

This week, we’re giving away 10 one-year licenses for the Windows and Mac versions of TranslateIt! worth up to $350 in total. Find out how you can win one after the jump.

With TranslateIt!, you can view the translation for any word on any document, including PDF files that you mouse over or highlight in conjunction with a hotkey.

A small window will pop up with the translation to the language you chose in the program settings, where you can also adjust and customize how the popup looks like.

There are currently 4 languages supported: English, Spanish, Russian, and German. However, you may download additional dictionaries of your choice easily within the app by opening the context menu and select: Service – Download additional dictionaries and follow the instructions.

Since the program started as a German-English translation service, you can hear the pronunciation of the selected word in English and in German.

When you hover over a word that TranslateIt! doesn’t have in its database, it will list similar but lexically modified words, which you might then be able to find the translation of. Another handy feature found in the Settings is reverse translation, which allows you to see a translation of the translation for more precise matching and definition.

In addition to the instant translation features, you can also translate whole paragraphs of text with the built-in Google Translate-powered dialog box, which you can access by right-clicking the system tray icon, and selecting Translate Text.

TranslateIt! also not only does translations, but it also carries dictionary features. You can search for definitions to words on Wiktionary, and add entries to your User dictionary which is separate from the Common Dictionary that contains standard translations.

If you rely on browser extensions to search for translations of words, TranslateIt! definitely is worth a try as it creates a most seamless experience, and works not only in browsers, but with other programs, as well as offline.

Coincidentally, a new version of TranslateIt! for Mac was just released today with loads of updates and a renewed text translation tool. Check it out on the TranslateIt! i3 for Mac homepage.

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, Dec 3rd at 2100hrs PST. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

If you own a website with a decent number of followers, you can actually try getting a review license directly from the developers. Just head over to this page for more information.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

MakeUseOf would like to thank TranslateIt! for their generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

Google Translate is a tool that we really appreciate here at MakeUseOf.  Simon offered four reasons why it’s better than other translation services, and Ann recently covered some tools that are built upon the Google Translate utility.

With most tools that are available online, many people like to have a desktop equivalent – something you can install locally on your PC or laptop that does the same thing. With that in mind, I would like to introduce you to the Google Translate Client.

The Google Translate Application

This locally installed application is called a “client” because in the background it plugs into the Google Translate service to perform all translations. What having a client installed does for you is that it allows you to always have a window available (in the foreground or background) that you can use to translate text whenever you like.

Even if you’re using applications where this client isn’t integrated into it, you can quickly copy the foreign language from that application (such as your favorite email client), and then paste it into this translation window.

You can set the application to auto-detect the source language so that you don’t have to fiddle with settings, and you can set the default target language. In this case I’ve set it to AutoDetect and translate everything to English.

If you’re absolutely obsessed with languages and learning them, you have to try out clicking on the “Learner” button, which opens up the Learner tool. This simply displays simple phrases in your native language, and the resulting text that you’ve selected in the “translate to:” box for cases where the source is English (or whatever you’ve set your default language to).

This feature – the ability to tell the app what to do if the text you’ve copied is actually your default language – allows you to use this client for a dual purpose. Obviously, you can use it to translate any language to your native tongue, but you can also use it as a tool to learn a new language. If you copy text from the web that is already written in your native language and paste it into the tool, it’ll tell you how to translate it to another language. This is fantastic if you’re a language student and want to practice reading web pages in another language.

As you can see on the settings screen, the app is highly configurable. For example, you can change font sizes, colors, start-up and hot keys.

Using The Client In Firefox Or IE

The real beauty of this app is when it is integrated with the application you’re using. While you could always copy text, go to the Google Translate website in a new tab, and then paste the text for a translation – why go through all of those steps? When you have the client installed, all you have to do is highlight the text that’s in a foreign language, and a “G” icon will immediately appear.

Click the “G” – and you will see a pop-up box with an instant translation of that text to your default language.

No more copy/paste and no more opening up a new browser window or tab – everything is translated right on-page. Another cool feature is that when you highlight a word or phrase in your native language, you’ll see three icons pop up.

“G” will do the translation to your default foreign language, “W” is a Wikipedia search that isn’t enabled in the free version – but a cool little additional feature of this free client is that “S” will do an instant Google search for the word or phrase you’ve highlighted.

Finally, if you ever come across text or a document in a foreign language and Google Translate either can’t translate it, or does a poor job of it – you can actually hire a human translator directly from the client. In the client app, if you hover your mouse over the image of the woman, you’ll see the current going rate for translated text – just click to request a paid translation.

Google Translate is becoming more and more popular, and I think at some point all of us eventually end up using the online version. If you tend to use it a lot – give this desktop client a roll and see if it saves you some time.

Do you know of any other cool Google Translate desktop tools? Do you use any other non-Google free translation tools on your computer? Share your insight in the comments section below.

Image credit: Yaroslav B

This post looks at various tools (desktop, browser-based and beyond) that make accessing and translating with Google Translate easier and fun.

Browser-Based Google Translate Tools

The main ways to access Google Translate are of course, provided through a standard web browser.

In terms of official products, there is a multi-browser supported Translate bookmarks, which work by allowing users to select a language, store it as a toolbar bookmark and then use it to auto-translate entire pages on demand with a simple click. Besides, Google Translate is a built-in feature inside Google Toolbar:

Unfortunately, the toolbar can prove to be a bit of a hassle for people who are looking for simple tools to help with international browsing. Sadly (and surprisingly), none of the official tools provides a worthy language auto-detect feature.

If you want something that’s a little more flexible, it may be worth trying out one of the following translation addons for the Firefox browser. The best option is an add-on called gTranslate, this is a great piece of software that allows users to translate any highlighted paragraphs of text from a specific web-page. It automatically identifies the language being used in the text and provides a translation based on the language preferences set up in the user’s browser, whilst providing the option to translate into any of the 50 language supported by Google Translate.

Two alternative options for Firefox are My Translator and Easy Google Translate, both of which have similar functionality to gTranslate, although each provides the translations in slightly different ways. My Translator makes the translation available in the context menu, whilst Easy Google Translate displays it as a balloon over the original text (which can be useful when trying to learn a foreign language).

Desktop Based Google Translate Tool

Whilst it isn’t really anything other than a prettier version of the online translation tool, AIRTranslate provides a very clean-looking desktop-based utility which runs off of Adobe Air. Unfortunately (though quite understandably), you still need to be connected to the Internet in order to use it.

As with the Google Translate homepage, you need to manually input (or copy and paste) the text you want to translate into the translation field. The program will then automatically detect the language it’s written in before presenting the user with the option of what language they want it translated into.

Translations appear in the same box that the original content was put in, with the option to revert the text back to the initial language by simply double-clicking on the text.

Gtalk Translation Bots

If you are an active Google Talk user, turning it to a translation tool might be a good idea. All you need to do is to add one of these Google bots (formatted as [from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com) to friends and send it the message you want translated.

And which Google Translate tools do you prefer? Please share your thoughts!

But as Twitter grows in popularity in remote corners of the world, so will the use of other languages on it.

Twitter itself says on its blog that 60% of registered Twitter accounts come from outside the US. Twitter itself speaks six languages. But the world speaks so many more. Add to the mix, the increasing mating between cell phones and Twitter apps and very soon multilingual tweets will be flying about from one corner of the world to the other.

Tweets may be 140 characters long but the real time information they bring is sometimes deeper in impact. It would be a pity to miss out on a good tweet just because you weren’t born a linguist. Thanks to a few Twitter translation tools, you don’t need to take language courses.

Here’s a look at five of these online Twitter translation tools. Most of the Tweet translation services are mashups of Google Translate. Ultimately, the only thing that sets them apart from each other is the way they take in your tweet and tweet out the result.

Twanslate

Twanslate is an experimental Firefox add-on that adds a feature to translate an incoming tweet into English. Using Google’s Translate service, the add-on functions as a simple button (a little globe icon) below any tweet that’s in another language. You can then click it and convert the tweet into English. The add-on works in your Twitter stream as well as an individual user’s public tweets page.

Twieee

Twieee is a Twitter translation tool that gives you eight languages to tweet in ““ Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese. And English of course. You can pick a language from the homepage and log in with your Twitter credentials. Your Twitter stream is displayed in the original language and the one you opted for. Using the language choice dropdown, you can also enter a tweet and directly submit it as a translated one.

The service is in beta. A few page errors that crop up while submitting and the absence of a How-to on the way the web app works are two early minuses for Twieee right now. Twieee also uses Google Translate.

Twinslator

Twinslator lets you type in your tweet and sent as a translated text in any of the languages in the dropdown. You can choose to send only the translated tweet or both the original as well as the translated one (Twins your Tweets). From the dropdown, it gives you 42 languages to choose from.

Tweetrans

Tweetrans detects the original language and gives you the option to tweet it in over 40 languages. You do not have to depend on Tweetrans as you can use your own Twitter client and the @tweetrans Twitter name with the translate language code. For example, @tweetrans 2fr your message here is the standard format. 2fr is the language code for French. Tweetrans detects your original language (say, English) and translates it on the fly to French. The other language codes are given on the site.

Also, using the format (for example) – en2fr, you can give both languages in a language pair (i.e., translate from and translate to language). You will receive a @Reply with the translation in the specified language within 60 seconds.

Twenglish

Okay, this one is actually not a serious Twitter “˜translation’ tool. Twenglish is for those who like to tweet like Twirds. Twirds is “˜Twitterspeak’ and a language of its own and if you are going to be a Twitter nerd, it’s what you will talk in. You will get the purpose of this Twitter fun tool from the screenshot. I hope you get why it’s a “twool that lets you tweet like a twird”.

And if you are a Star Trek fan, try out the Tweet in Klingon if you want to avoid doublespeak and keep peace in the Federation.

These services give you the help to not only understand someone’s natural language, but also create a bit of impact in 140 characters or less by tweeting in theirs. That’s a small step towards living amicably in a global village – one tweet at a time.

Tweet in and let us know if you find these Twitter language services helpful.  And maybe you know a few other similar services that we missed?