Google translate and Google voice to text 2018

John D K -

Computer translation and voice to text software continue to evolve with artificial intelligence and big data. In many translations is close to human level of translation.

Google translate in 2018

For more than 10 years and currently with 103 languages Google translate is a big name in translation business. What is changed for those 12 years of Google translate:

  • Google translate app - good and reliable app for translation which is able to work even off-line. You can use feature bilingual conversation in 100 languages. Translate a bilingual conversation

  • text to voice - you can use Google translate to make text to voice. Now the voice has more natural sound in more languages. Despite that there's no option for changing the voice - gender, accent, style. It's very useful if you want to convert text to speech.

  • less translate fails - many mistakes were reported during the years. Google translate is more mature and level of translation accuracy is on acceptable levels for an average Internet user.

  • site translation - you can translate whole pages extremely easily by several clicks. This is powerful option for people who shop in other languages

  • translation of documents - if you want to translate documents with good level of understanding and keeping the document format. You can even use your camera to scan a document and translate it.

  • translator kit - Translator Toolkit is a really powerful tool for translation text. You can translate huge documents in many formats. You can even pay for better translation or share with someone else to complete or verify your efforts. How it work:

Upload a file to translate

In short:

Machine translate evolution:

2003 - phrase-based translation system
2013 - Neural machine translation
unknown - semantic translation

Google translation mistakes from beginning to now:

  • Madrid -> London;
  • Lady Gaga -> Britney Spears;
  • Real Madrid -> Barcelona
  • 1 USD => 1 EUR

all these examples are from the past and playing with different languages.

Google Translate is the best option for me in 2018 for free translation. It could be used as a guide to get the basic concepts of many different languages.

Google speech recognition or speech to text

Google is a really helpful tool when you want to get text from a speech. There are many paid alternatives but still Google is free and accurate for English.

How to use it:

  • Visit: Google Docs
  • Create new blank document
  • Go to Add-ons
  • Speech recognition SoundWriter
  • Start
  • In the new opened window(Speech recognition SoundWriter) press Record button

This is a sample text that I was able to catch from Youtube video with great accuracy:

Near 50 trillion miles away now heading towards the three little stars in a slatted world are called orion's belt distance is here so vexed the method of wight use a single light years on those 6 trillion miles or write 1500 light years away that means were travelling at 150 trillion miles a second or going to explore that grows colourcloud just below the belt it's called the orion nebula you're amazing things happening inside his class as we loved it couples around