Twitter appears to be testing out a new feature that will allow you to automatically translate tweets into other languages. It was only a month ago that Singularity Hub argued that automatic translation of tweets into other languages was an obvious feature whose time has come. Now it appears that time may be very near indeed, as Appscout has just noticed an option to translate a Dutch tweet for the trending topic “bloodbuzz ohio” into other languages. See the Appscout screenshot below:
As you can see from the snapshot above, there is an option to display tweets based on language, and below that an option to have tweets translated into another language – in this case English. The translations are provided by Google, whose language translation engine is regarded as perhaps the world’s best after a decade plus investment. Google’s language translation has been making big waves recently with its incorporation into smart phone apps and the automatic conversion of speech to text captioning for all videos on Youtube.
Anyone who has used Google’s translation knows that it is far from perfect. And yet one of the beauties of human reasoning is that we can gather most of what we need from a translation even when it is only marginally good. Here at the Hub we see the emergence of quality language translation as a success for modern AI. More importantly, it is a symbol of the gains that have been promised from the convergence of accelerating technologies. The language barrier is slowly crumbling around us and our tweets, blogs, and our ideas are increasingly available to a global audience of more than 6 billion people. So please bring on the automatic translations Twitter – their time has come! Now who is ready for a tweetbomb?
