Google Translate for Kindle 3G: Fixed!
 

I always take my Kindle with me when I go somewhere, but just the other day it struck me that I ought to be able to use Google Translate on the fly for when I really can't get my point across and need to communicate using the global 3G coverage.

If you've tried going to go to translate.google.com on the kindle, you won't get very far: There's basically no way to select the languages and for whatever reason the text input is blacked out so you can't read what you type. That won't work for me..

So I fixed it: kindlefish.com (or, for the time being, kindlefish.t15.org for the direct link).

Dead simple, loads fast, can save preset languages, and returns nice big crisp clear easy to share text in whatever language you want. What do you think?

There's a pretty major glitch as far as this being a useful interactive translation tool. Say you're visiting a Spanish speaking country and you don't speak Spanish. You'd set the input language to English, the output language to Spanish, type in the phrase you want translated and show the result to the person you're "talking" to. Now, hand the Kindle to that person so they can communicate back to you. They would set the input language to English, but the output languages are still only French, Spanish, and Russian, there is no option to translate back into English! There does not seem to be an alternate keyboard to enter accent marks or to use alternate alphabets.

Hey BLI,

I understand what you mean, and I did consider that when I was writing it but for the moment it seemed like it was more work than it was worth. There's two barriers: 1) In order to do that, it would require a virtual on screen keyboard (which is possible) for many languages. For example, "Самолет" would be impossible to enter with the hardware as is. So would "Straßen". That's doable, but it would require a little more work. 2) There's an issue of getting the other person knowing how to input their message, even with the keyboard. Presented with two keyboards and not sure what to do, there's a good chance that the kindle would get in the way them trying to communicate back to you as the tech becomes the focus.
My thought was that if I can't ask where the bathroom is, how am I going to help them use my Kindle, if need be?

That said, a basic "dialog mode" could be done, by flipping the in and outputs when the submit button is pressed. That would get it close, even with the keyboard issue. As is, you can do reverse translates (set input language to whatever it is and the selected output language to English) but it doesn't switch automatically. That would be pretty quick if that's something that's wanted.

As for the "French, Spanish, Russian", this may sound like an odd question but is it unclear that those are drop down lists? To me I see it automatically, but I've heard the same from someone else and starting to wonder if I need better labeling to make sure it's obvious. Output language can be anything that's supported by Google. There should be 56 options there. :)

Thanks for your response, as I mentioned in my e-mail to you this morning, I totally missed the drop-down boxes on the left, and that fixes the big issue I was having. Thanks again for working on this great program for Kindle users.

http://kindlefish.t15.org/dialog.html

There's still no virtual keyboard yet, but is this about what you were looking for? :)

That is exactly what I'm looking for, thanks!

No problem. I'll see about the virtual keyboard the next time I find myself unable to focus on work. ;) Thanks for the push to write it up sooner, rather than later.