A Brief Disclaimer
I’m fully aware that many of my reviews come across as a bit effusive. For me, it’s far easier to review apps that I love rather than type out scathing critiques of the crapware that junks up most of the App Store’s virtual shelves. To be fair, witty criticism has its place in tech reviews and can certainly be as enjoyable to read as it is to write; however, I usually prefer writing on topics I feel passionate about, and I’m simply more inspired by apps that wow than by those that disappoint. All of that to say, the following review is another that could easily be filed under the heading: Glowing Reviews the Developer’s Marketing Team Will Love. In my defense, Google Translate deserves every ounce of praise it receives. And here’s why…
Bridging the Cultural Divide
Since July of 2010 I have been living in Kunming, China, a beautiful city in the southern province of Yunnan. As you might guess, Mandarin is not my native language, and although I’m currently studying Chinese, the language barrier often becomes a frustrating obstacle during my day-to-day life. I hoped my iPhone would be a useful tool in overcoming this obstacle when I first moved to Kunming, and I purchased several apps that promised to help with translation and language learning during my transition into a new culture. I tried Pleco, Jibbigo, a Lonely Planet app and several others, but none of them turned out to be as useful or convenient as the Google Translate app. What’s more, several of these apps cost between ten and twenty dollars, while Google’s app is—you guessed it—free. When an app is significantly better than its competitors and significantly cheaper (or in this case free), deciding which to use becomes ridiculously easy.
Since installing it a few hours after its debut in the App Store, Google Translate has not only carved itself a permanent spot on my home screen, but it has also become one of the most useful pieces of software that I own. Sure it does the easy stuff like translate individual words from English to Chinese and vice versa, but it also translates long paragraphs of text in an instant with stunning reliability. It allows queries to be input via speech or text and spits out results in both Chinese characters and Pinyin (the English alphabet’s phonetic equivalent for Chinese characters), and provides an option to play the result as an audio file spoken by a native Chinese speaker. Since Chinese is a tonal language, this last feature is actually indispensable. In a language where the only difference between saying mother and horse is the rise or fall of your voice, you don’t want to have to guess at proper pronunciation. The amount of functionality Google has crammed into this app, packaged within a remarkably simple and usable interface, is impressive to say the least. And did I mention all this goodness comes at the unbelievable price of free?
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