Has Google Made Learning a Second Language Obsolete?
FlyerTalk December 16, 2019
Rather quietly, considering the potential impact for future travelers, Google rolled out a new feature to Google Assistant: Real-time translation. It acts as a personal translator, turning Korean to English quickly enough for you to facilitate a conversation, flirt with someone in Farsi, or at least ask your waiter in Chengdu what’s good on the menu. While the feature initially rolled out at the beginning of this year to select Google Home devices, now it is available on any Assistant-enabled iOS and Android phones worldwide.
How It Works
Say “OK Google, help me speak [insert the other language you’d like to communicate in],” press the mic icon and the screen will translate and dictate anything said in either language. I’ve tested it out on my own Pixel 4xl and it works seamlessly. Two people who both have Google Assistant can carry on a conversation in only slightly delayed time–enough for the translator to say what you said in another language–making even prolonged communication pretty easy.
And, as far as I’ve seen, it’s fairly accurate and can pick up colloquialisms and even compensated for my terrible accent when I tried to repeat its English to German translation back to it. It works so well that the front desks of hotels like Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport have used it to help guests communicate with hotel staff in many of the 44 languages that Google’s interpreter is fluent in.
Previously, hotel staff had to dial into an in-house translation service to speak to guests in languages that they didn’t know.
What Does This Change?
As someone who travels frequently, having a tool like Google’s real-time interpreter (especially when used along with Google Translate which can be downloaded to work offline) makes me excited about the new doors this opens up for off-the-beaten path travel in far-flung places. As someone who is currently doing their best in their third year of Korean class, this new technology, and others like it, makes me wonder if learning another language will soon become much less necessary.
However you feel about your current language studies, you’ll find Google’s interprter mode already installed on your Android device (with the latest update). If you have an iPhone, you’ll have to download it from the app store.
I was frustrated a few times in Italy when my bnb hosts kept using audio Google instead of trying to just communicate with me in my limited Italian. Google is one tool out of many, and it can provide important clarifications, but becoming dependent on it can stultify someone's progress in a foreign language and general communicative skills. People who work with international tourists, for example, can always use more English practice (since English is the current lingua franca.)
Tried it on Spanish to english, absolutely useless! Definitely has not made learning a second language obsolete.
Learn the foreign language and immerse yourself in their culture. You’ll only be enriched. This app encourages mediocrity and laziness. Call me old fashioned, but it’s not the way diplomacy is founded upon.
Hi -- Please fix "I tried to repeat it’s English to German." This should be "its," not "it's." It's is a contraction for it is. Its is the possessive. AC
Fixed, thanks!
Bettridge's Law: No it hasn't.