Perhaps Google didn’t mean for the translation service to serve as a tourist’s primary means of communication in a foreign country, but I figured it was worth a shot. But when it came to having a somewhat deeper conversation with multiple questions or longer answers, I relied on other people or globally known facial cues and body language to figure it out. I did find that Google Translate worked best when I fed the app minimal command words: Coffee. I found myself increasingly relying on dual speakers to give me what the app had promised but couldn’t fully deliver. What the patient shopkeeper was trying to say was that he designed the pieces he sold in the store – something I wouldn’t have been able to pick up from what Google Translate relayed to me, if some English speaker hadn’t kindly stepped in. Or at least that’s what Google Translate told me he said. These were the responses from a shopkeeper in the Asakusa district, who spoke only Japanese, when I asked him about the items he sold in his traditional kimono store. “You are using me kimono I think Nishika. I had to repeat my questions multiple times for the app and had to simplify my query with each attempt, which dragged out conversations in an awkward way even more. Moreover, I found myself piecing their answers together, especially when the app translated their words into gibberish, which it did a lot.īased on the confused looks I got when showing people the English-to-Japanese translations, I’m not sure those were on point either. I’d find myself having to awkwardly reload the “listen” button and signal perplexed speakers to continue, ruining the natural flow of what I thought would more closely resemble a real-time chat. This quickly became the bane of my interactions with Tokyo residents. A bell-like tone signals that the app is done listening, regardless of whether someone is mid-sentence – Google Translate’s equivalent of “talk to the hand.” One of my main issues with the app is the short time span allotted for a speaker to talk.
In my experience, I found that using Google Translate with voice input helps start the conversation but drops the ball before the end zone.
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