studio J

A few months ago, while having dinner with a friend, we got to talking about Google. Personally, I am a Google nut. I have an Android phone, I use Gmail and many of the other tools that go along with it, I often use the Chrome browser and I’m super excited to see Chrome OS and the possibility of a tablet running either Chrome or Android. Then, we touched upon one of Google’s latest creations, Google Translate, which apparently hit a nerve with my good friend; you see, she is a college educated French Translator.

Google Translate is a very powerful tool that can interpret typed conversation almost instantly. Select your ‘from’ and ‘to’ languages, type text in the box and as you type, it will provide a real-time translation. To go the extra mile, it also allows you to listen to the translation in audio format.

Is Google an evil corporation that will eventually put translators out of business? Here’s where my friend and I had to agree to disagree. She said yes, but I firmly believe that this could be the future of communications. The study of language will, over the next decade or so, be forced to evolve. Instead of translators and interpreters, the world will need linguists that understand how languages have come about, branched off into various dialects,etc. Basic etymology will become the new hotness for communications. These folk will be at the front lines.

Now imagine tools such as Google Translate integrated into social media and being widely available to anyone with an internet connection. I could make friends on Facebook with a woman in a third-world country who wants to learn about starting her own business. Non-profits can get real time information from war-torn countries in order to better provide aid to those in need. Going with the trends of recent years, information will flow even more freely across international borders as easily as it does across state borders now. The world will continue to shrink, and soon the family of five in Congo will be able to carry on a conversation with their pals in Arkansas as easily as picking up a phone.