Google Translate adds easter egg that recognizes the beatboxing hack | Hacker News Reader

Google Translate adds easter egg that recognizes the beatboxing hack

translate.google.com

Note: IF you have flash disabled, you will not see it, since the 'listen' feature is a flash applet

The easter egg is a simple 'beat box' icon below the original text much like the 'listen' icon under the translated text.

Edit: somebody in the thread uploaded a screenshot, thx: http://i.imgur.com/4jd5y.png

If you add a real word in German after the beatbox text, it will read out the individual letters instead, no beatboxing. Example:

http://translate.google.com/#de|en|pv%20zk%20pv%20pv%20zk%20...

The conditions are German language and no consonants.

I think you mean no vowels

As some of the comments hint, the link is broken (de|en should be de|de); it translates from German to English. (The beatboxing "hack" only works with German-to-German translation.)

It did work for me using de|en

If you switch the languages, you get an hillarious example of probabilistic spelling suggestion gone too far:

http://translate.google.com/#de|en|pv%20zk%20pv%20pv%20zk%20...

http://i.imgur.com/64eXg.png <== What I saw.

Ok so that's weird. I was just showing this to my sister earlier today and noticed that there was no Listen, just Beatbox.

Naturally I was delighted that they recognised the meme ... but, talk about a race condition. I thought this was nothing new and here were are, a 48 minute old HN submission whereas I was showing my sister probably 50 minutes ago.

Slightly related, the first hit on google for "google beatbox" is translate.google.com

Don't worry; it's been there for a few days already ...

more than a week, actually...

Probably because the Google Crawler registered all "google beatbox" links leading to that page.

People have used this feature before to "fake" results, although this time it is clearly legit. It's a shame Google doesn't register hash (#) locations.

Is it really an easter egg? To me it seems more like they "fixed" it and broke the beatboxing trick in the process.

You can still add dummy vowels to the word to make it sound beatboxy

You missed the easter egg. Look harder.

It seems that the "Beatbox" button is created after the page load, probably by some Ajax call. That may explain why some people are not seeing it.

I don't see any "Beatbox" button, it says "Listen".

On the left, under the text input box.

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/4jd5y.png

The "beatbox" link is absent for me, and the "listen" link is present but doesn't work for me. shrug

The "Beatbox" button is under the untranslated text (that is supposedly in German).

It's easier to see if you set it to translate German -> German, because then both listen buttons will become beatbox buttons.

I'm not familiar with whatever the original "beatboxing hack" was. Could someone please provide a little bit of background?

Make it translate from german to german and press the 'listen' button. Here's the original 'Google Beatbox' topic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1952356

The button is there, but it doesn't work on Linux(Ubuntu 10.04 with Chromium). The regular listen button does work.

Worked on both Chromium 8.0.552 and Firefox 3.6.13 on Ubuntu 10.04. Flash issues probably?

works on arch linux with chromium 8.0.552.237

Ha!

If you edit the beatbox text, Google helpfully asks "did you mean ... ?" and suggests the original text.

The "listen" button now just reads the letters, which is still pretty funny.

I didn't see the Beatbox button first and thought she now sings the letters, like http://translate.google.com/#de|en|pvpvpvpvpvpvpvv%0A

Other languages yield interesting sounds too http://translate.google.com/#de|es|pvpvpvpvbvbvbvbvpvpvpvpva...

The thing that really surprised me is that at first someone made a beatbox with MISUSING Google Translate! but now google instead of (for example) banning that misusing, has created a tool to help you enjoy Google Translate in any way you like! even if it's not it's original purpose!!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com