Google Translate for Animals | Hacker News Reader

Google Translate for Animals

google.co.uk

90 pointsmatkem22 comments

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There is a demo video! Hilarious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I24bSteJpw

I highly recommend watching it in TEXTp.

Already April 1st in the UK.

Today is the best day of the year.

Could somebody with an Android phone please determine whether they went all the way through with building an Android app? It appears you can only search the marketplace from a handset.

They really did build an app: Cat to English - "Why can't they call it a door, I mean cat flap is so degrading"

Hey, that's what my cat said too! And we don't even have a cat flap, she's indoor only. Something seems fishy...

or... catty?

"Can we please move somewhere sunnier? There aren't enough hours in the day for me to work on my tan."

Mine wants to be fed, which is quite impressive as I don't have a cat. but now I am going to get one, so I can feed it.

"Who are you? Do you have food?" -- Sounds like a pretty accurate translation to me.

Yes, they did. http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-google-andro...

You can choose the Target animal (e.g. Guinea pig), press the listen button which "listens" for four seconds and outputs translations like "I could really do with an extension. This place could use some wooden decking." and "What is that thing anyway? Can I eat it?"

Dr. Goolittle?

It looks like Google is already keeping up with their April Fool's Day tradition...

I loved Dr. Doolittle when I was a kid so this brought a smile to my face.

today is going to be an easy day to ignore the distraction of the internet

Don't believe a word the sheep say. They're all liars.

This made my day. LOL, how cute.

Google n. a company that never lets you down today ^_^

What's even funnier about it is that animals do indeed use sound to communicate and that this application is both theoretically and technically feasible.

Animals do not emit sounds for the sake of emitting sounds, they do so with specific intentions, desires, and goals, and as a result of specific systems that have developed towards the end of a complex system of communication involving vocal and auditory mechanisms, sound waves, and cognitive elements giving the capacity to process and generate these patterns of sound.

It's funny to me because I know that some people would look at this application and think of it as a hilarious joke: "Understand animal sounds? Ha Ha Ha good one Google! As if! Chinese Room! Hurf Durf! IMPOSSIBLE!"

It's also funny to me because I know that some hackers will look at this and be inspired to spend their spare cycles researching and developing this application, and wind up making a small fortune when they put it on the app store.

It's also funny to me because I suspect that some crafty googlers have already done this and are using the video and google's reputation for funny April Fools Day Jokes as a viral marketing tactic for their April Fool's Day Day-After joke, where they release the fully functional application, having developed it during their allocated "pet project" time.

Good one Google!

As the saying goes, "Simpsons did it" (and quite a long while ago, too): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother,_Can_You_Spare_Two_Dime...

Animal communication is definitely very complex. They all have their own language and it's often not just oral.

I've read an interesting theory that cats meow a lot at us humans because they see that we don't perceive their body language well enough. Out of frustration and because they see and hear that we speak a lot they adapt.

We're not to the point where we are able to translate live human communication smoothly. Even contextual text translation is terrible (Google translate).

I guess we're a long way from being able to translate animal communication effectively but I think it's a very intersting subject.

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