Google Unveils Advance That Brings Us Closer To Star Trek’s “Universal Translator”

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Several companies have recently brought out tools for providing simultaneous translation (see THE BEST RESOURCES TO HELP ELL STUDENTS WITH SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION IN THE CLASSROOM) and, today, Google joined the crowd.

They announced that they’re rolling out this capability to the Google Translate app on Pixel phones and doing the same next year on IOS.

The same announcement highlighted improvements in their “practice” feature but, as I said earlier, it still has a ways to go to better Duolingo.

But the simultaneous translation feature appears pretty impressive.  It’s also very timely because, with the drop in ELL Newcomer enrollment, it’s a safe bet that more Newcomers will be parachuted into regular content classes with little or no support.  This new simultaneous tool, or other new ones, will come in handy to both teachers and students alike.

Even though these translation developments are coming faster than I had expected, I still think most ELL classes above low Intermediate need to be restructured to emphasize speaking and listening (see Does Advanced Tech Mean That Secondary ELL Classes Should Be Radically Restructured?).  Students are still going to be very motivated to develop oral skills, and there are many other reasons and advantages to developing multilingual skills (see The Best Resources For Learning The Advantages To Being Bilingual).