Originally Posted By Laurie Campbell on May 26, 2018
Three years ago in this course, Lane Hardy surveyed mobile translation apps available at the time. He pointed out that Google Translate had not yet incorporated WordLens’ augmented reality ability, and that we were still a little way away from the science fiction-inspired Universal Translator from Star Trek.
Even in the space of three years, Google Translate has become an indispensable tool in the classroom. Approximately 1/3 of the students in the Calgary Catholic School District are considered English Language Learners. Some of these learners are very new to the English language and come to us feeling isolated and overwhelmed. Google Translate has been helpful in my school to students who are brand new to Canada. It is very specifically meant to be used on a mobile device, to help with translation where ever, whenever.
I’ll go through a few workflows I have in place to support these learners. I’d love to hear if you have a more efficient way of achieving the same goals!
- Translating subject-specific materials. Our Grade 5 Social Studies text (Voices of Canada, published by Pearson Canada) does not seem to have a clean .pdf version available anywhere. As a result, we have been scanning sections of it, and then running these scans through Adobe Acrobat for text recognition – very glitchy. I then upload the text into Google Docs and use Google Translate to give a rough translation into Spanish. The student still needs to have the textbook handy to see the pictures, but the gist of the written text is there, on either an iPad, Chromebook, or the student’s individual iPhone.
- Students and teachers can speak into the phone and get an audible translation using Google Translate. To date, when students have used this, it has been more for entertainment value. My student who arrived from Columbia in January doesn’t seem to reach for this tool during informal conversations with peers, but it has been useful for figuring out conversations between the student and staff members. Finding another student who speaks Spanish and can translate has still been more helpful.
- Google Translate can be used to instantly translate small snippets of text using the phone’s camera. To a degree, this can be done live, or a picture can be taken and the text highlighted, then translated. This is the technology adapted from WordLens that Lane Hardy mentioned three years ago. On an odd side note, I tried this out on vacation at Christmas time. Below, you’ll see a picture of a Mexican chocolate bar. Chich Arito (“Little Pea”) is a famous soccer player. The text roughly translates to “Get in the game with Little Pea.” Using Google Translate, I got “Challenges Mackerel”. Apparently this technology still needs a little work, but it’s fantastic at the moment!
As someone who teaches in a school with approximately 65% English Language Learners (ELL) I have always been on the lookout for ways to communicate with my students and Google Translate has been a constant tool I have used. One of the main reasons why I keep returning to Google Translate, rather than other translation tools or dictionaries is due to the number of different languages I may have in a class. I chose Laurie’s post because I found it interesting how she commented about change within the technology in three years and in the past two years there has even been more changes. As Laurie touched on, Google Translate is actually available in a few different formats, each having different features. First off, there is the website, which allows the user to copy and paste or to translate an entire PDF. Then there is the extension, which allows the user to translate entire websites. Then there is the embedded feature in Google Docs, which will create a new doc in the chosen language. Finally, there is the mobile format. As Laurie discussed, the mobile app does allow people to have a translated conversation, which I have seen students new to Canada used to communicate with their teacher. Although Laurie indicated that students tend to prefer to communicate through another student, this is not always possible. Similarly, students can also type to communicate, however if the student’s native language uses a different alphabet you will need to make sure this is downloaded. In regards to the AR translation, there have been some updates. One of the past issues is that the translation jumped around a lot, however you can now pause the translation. Also, the user can scan a page, which allows the user to get a large portion of text translated and put into a page that isn’t quite as busy. As Laurie also mentions, there is work to be done. First off, there are many languages missing. Secondly, the translations are not perfect, but Google Translate translations are user generated, so it is literally improving each day. Although I have had students say there are some errors, they still say that it is helpful.
A video of the mobile feature