Well things didn't go as planned today. We tried to have this out this morning to have a "Tech Tuesday" just to have a long power outage when uploading the last picture. Yeah it sucked, but we are over it. It happens. So today will be an "Evening Tech Tuesday Edition." Since Swinging Dick is screwing off somewhere trying impressing someone with his self proclaimed writing skills, that I call Bullsh**ting Skills, I am left to turn to my goober side and write something for us gadget geeks out there. Richard says all the time, "Slim, if you were as bright as you are into gadgets, I wouldn't have to carry your load." Again this is where his BS skills get sharpened on a daily basis. So I decided to share with everyone an app I use my my Android phone called "Google Translate".

Now before some of you like Swinging Dick get their Crapple (Apple) pants all wadded up, let me tell you that Google Translate is on the Android Market and ITunes. So now all you with your Crapple ICrap Phones can enjoy the same app as us cool guys with Android phones. Just because I personally don't care for Crapple, doesn't mean I don't respect it. I mainly bash it because I get a kick out of Richard getting worked up about it. It's a pass time for me, really. Let me get back on track here, I could go down the Swinging Dick and his ICrap all day. So basically, Google Translate does what it says in it's name. It translates. It can do this over 63 languages right now, 17 of those via typing it on the screen and 24 languages can be spoken using the speaker phone. 

As you can see by the first screen it is pretty simple to use. You pick what language you want to translate into what language. From there you just type in what you want to ask. In this case "Did you call for the police?" Within a few seconds, it comes up with the translation, "?Has llamado a la policia?" Now you see that there is a speaker icon? Tap that and it will play the translation via speaker phone. The magnifying glass icon just makes the translation take up the whole screen so you can show it. The there is the all important star icon. If you know anything about Google/Gmail or any other Google product, you know that means when you tap that, it marks it as important/favorite. What this means, is that you can readily get to it again if you think you might use this phrase again. There is a history search on the app that will bring up a list of your recent translations. 

Now you might be saying, "Yeah that is all good, but it will take forever to type what I want, then hand it over to the person I am trying to communicate just to have them type an answer." Well Google or who I call El Goog, has you covered. You see that "Enter Conversation Mode" at the bottom? Tap that and you are in a self explained conversation mode. You tap the mic icon and way you go talking into it. It will then translate and say it over speaker phone. Then you can tap the "Responder en Espanol" area and it records what they are saying and retranslates it into English. Repeat steps as needed and BAM, you are now semi multi-lingual. 

Now you have to remember that this is a mobile app and you might run into a few bugs. It might not have heard you, didn't understand because you were talking to fast, or any slight issue might cause this to hang up. I personally haven't had any issues, but that doesn't mean it's perfect. An added pro to this is that you might save time while waiting on a bi-lingual partner to show up to the call you are on. How much time depends on how the app works, and how far your partner is. There are a couple of issues for law enforcement that could hinder using this. Will this open you up to having your phone used as evidence if a case goes to court, if you used this? It is possible. It is just like taking a picture with your phone for a case. Now you opened your phone to the case as evidence. Now they might be able to dig into your personal life via your phone that is now evidence. This all depends on local law, but I just wanted to warn you of the possibilities. All this is not to say that a department couldn't buy smart phones for work use, and you treat it as a work only phone. Then maybe this would be a great tool out in the field. Who knows what the possibilities are of an app like this? So is there anyone out there that uses this currently? Maybe for personal use or maybe at work? Let us know, we like follow ups on stuff we yap about on here. 

Slim, OUT!