Great Gadget: Phone Translator App

If you’re Latino in the US chances are that translating from English to Spanish or vice-versa is a huge part of your life. How often have you been called-on to be the communication bridge over a language gap? The last time I was at the San Antonio airport a well intended blue-haired information  lady (it’s a Texas thing, go with it) was stumbling over a hughe language gap. Two ladies, from Mexico, were in a jam; their credit card was rejected at the car rental counter and they needed to get to their hotel. That was the impasse. I stepped in, more awkwardly then gallantly, asked a few questions in either direction, cleared the misunderstandings and went on my way.

Now, if the ladies had written their dilema on paper, they could have solved their problem this way:

Pardon the unintended pitch, but, is this cool or what?

I’ve been evangelizing about the accurateness of Google translator.  The folks over at Google ditched the old fashioned grammatical translation method and devised an algorithm, backed by a huge database that renders very good translations. It’s not perfect, and nether is the phone app because nothing compares to a human brain navigating the nuances of language. But its good enough to save lots of time. You can go back and tweak the translations and save yourself tons of time.