Google Translate: A (Augmented) World of Possibilities

The goal of virtual reality (VR) is to replace the world around, be it sights, sounds, or smells. Augmented reality, however, was designed to take the world as it exists and create changes, sometimes subtly, that have the potential to completely alter our perspective. For that reason, AR is becoming ever more popular.

The Last Newspaper “Augmented Reality: The Two Worlds Merge”

At first, AR was limited to those willing to wear clunky and oftentimes expensive headgear.  Now, however, we have the technology to create and experience AR in the palm of our hand. Smart phones, thanks to improvements in camera, processor, batteries, and GPS (among other technologies), have unlocked a world of possibilities beyond what early developers could have imagined.

Among the AR apps that are re-imagining our world is Google Translate. For many years, travelers have relied upon translating devices and apps to converse with other individuals with whom they would normally have no hope of communicating. Unlike earlier translation tools, Google Translate does much more than convert one typed word to another.

Twenty years ago, if you found yourself in a foreign country’s bus station you would have no hope of knowing what was going on, but today, using Translate, you can scan a sign with any smartphone camera and know exactly which line to stand in to get where you need to be. Additionally, the app allows you to highlight the specific text you want translated.  Then, once the text has been identified, it can be translated into dozens of the most commonly used languages.

Left: I took a screenshot while using Google Translate on the mustard I picked up while in Canada

Right: Using Google Translate to finally learn what the sticker on my replacement phone screen says

Translate is unique from most other AR apps because it makes the real virtual by creating a digital copy of what exists in the real world. However, unlike the physical sign, the digital sign can re-written, forwarded, retranslated, and even read aloud. As Tinnell said in his 2011work All the World’s a Link: The Global Theater of Mobile World Browsers, “The world’s surface is made to remember what happened upon it, to bear permanent legible albeit virtual traces. And yet … these permanent traces can be sorted through and effectively erased form the scene (without erasing them from the servers) and new permanent traces can be added at the scene, ad infinitum (or however much data the server can hold)."

The ability to speak with tone and inflection gives this app a degree of agency we would not normally attribute to a piece of software. The back and forth procedure of the app also gives it the air of a guide or teacher that is education us about an unfamiliar culture in a way we will understand.

No matter where the world of AR takes us, you can be sure that they are here to stay, getting better all the while.


Be sure to check out my classmates takes on augmented reality:
Amy (realrhetoricalrantings.blogspot.com)
Ellie (thisismyblog24601.blogspot.com)