Google Translate

Google Translate

Google Translate iTunes App

Price: Free!

In the last five years my perspective on cell phones in the classroom has done a complete about face, probably right in line with the advances in smart phone capabilities.  Online translators have traditionally been the bane of language teachers' existence.  Students erroneously believe that they can install a paragraph of text and get an accurate translation.  Five years ago, if a student put the English word "kid" into a translator, they would get the word for baby goat as the translation.  I cannot tell you how many times a translator produced a hilarious mistake like this.  However, Google has created a program that learns!  I'm no expert on artificial intelligence or adaptive technology, but in that time period, the Google Translate program has learned that most of the time, people searching for "kid" wish to find a word for child and now provides a list of possibilities, not unlike a dictionary search.  Check it out: http://translate.google.com/#en/es/kid

Not only does it translate text into a myriad of languages, it also will pronounce words that you write in the translate window.  My daughter and her friends have spent hours of hilarious fun making it say slightly inappropriate things (think potty humor) and some ingenious people have actually gone as far as to paste song lyrics into the translator and to create videos with the results.  Check it out:
 Lady Gaga Google Translate

 How does this translate to the classroom?  I now allow my college students to have their cell phones or iPods out during group work where they might be writing a dialog to perform or completing a reading followed by a comprehension activity.  Sure, they are texting and looking at their Facebook/Twitter accounts, of that I have no doubt, but in the 1-2 minutes that it takes me to circulate the classroom and check in on all of the groups, they self-censor that type of activity.  They understand that they are using the phone as a tool.

So, why should you buy the $19.99 dictionary I reviewed in my last post when this app is free?  This is not a dictionary.  It does not show your word in an alphabetical list.  It does not provide whole verb conjugations.  It does provide a list of synonyms, but it is not as comprehensive as in the dictionary, nor does it provide potential phrases to accompany the word you have searched for.

For a quick word search, this is an exceptional tool.  For a language scholar it is certainly worth it to invest in a dictionary in addition to a translator app.  For teachers, this will certainly empower your students to search for and create their own meaning with the target language, however you must be very clear that only single word searches are allowed or appropriate, as full sentences are still not translated well by a computer program.