I suppose that library staff could find a professional use for Google Earth, especially the crafty ones, but I don't know that I can come up with one. Beyond giving directions or using it as a reference to find a place (which I'd use something a little simpler for anyhow), I'm stumped.
I do use Google Earth for fun and sometimes as a reference to find a place, but I don't necessarily recommend or use it for directions; I prefer Apple's native app for that(go ahead and joke) and since my iPad doesn't have cellular capability, I don't exactly bring it along and look for directions "on the fly". Google Earth does have the same street view option as Google Maps and it uses gesture (pinching, swiping, etc) for zooming, looking around, moving around, etc. and it's pretty intuitive to use. I guess to shortly sum up Google Earth, it's a fun tool to learn some geography and monkey with, but it's not something I'd use beyond that.
The reason I want to look at iTranslate is that I see it as a useful tool for both my professional life and personal life. Hennepin County (my system) with little doubt, is Minnesota's most diverse place. As such, we encounter a lot of diversity in our libraries, even in the "far flung" exurban ones. Not all of our patrons speak English and only some staff speak second languages. I would LOVE to have a tool that can translate so we can better serve our patrons and let them hear what we have to say in their native tongue and vice versa. It might be a little akward at first, but a mobile device and app could help us with that.
On a personal level, I could use iTranslate to brush up and re-learn a second language I'm familiar with, but not fluent in...Between high school and college, I took 4 years of Spanish, so I do have a decent vocabulary but my grammar is horrible and I find that I make myself nervous when trying to converse with a native speaker, I want to rectify that.
Unfortunately, iTranslate is a bit of a let down and initially feels like a run around of an app. The app has been changed completely since the 23 Things page was first published, so when you download it, the first thing it asks you is if you want to download the new universal (phone and tablet, iOS 7 optimized) version, which isn't fully necessary...unless you want to use the voice recognition feature which is a premium (paid) option and it's $2.99. While that's not an outrageous price, it is annoying since that was one of the features I was really looking for and I believed was part of the app, guess I didn't look at the fine print, huh?
I do want to give credit where it's due and will because iTranslate is a good translator. One can enter text and/or copy and paste in many (81 total) languages and there's a detect feature in case you have no clue what language you're looking at, but would like to see. For example 
I picked a simple sentence in Spanish that I know the translation for and was slightly impressed, considering I didn't use proper Spanish accent and grammar.
I won't include a photo example, but it's easy to copy and paste, just swipe the first box and you'll have a little icon to access your clipboard and the copied text will paste and translate. You can also revisit your translation history by tapping the upper right icon, kind of nifty.
In the end, I'll admit I'm a little disappointed with iTranslate, not because it's a bad app, but my ideas for its use have been unfounded. I suppose you could hand the device to someone, if they're trust worthy and have them enter text and vice verse, but I really liked the idea of voice recognition. For personal use, iTranslate can still meet my expectations to an extent, though Bing and Google both have the same simple translation capabilities and you can access them via your preferred web browser, not sure I really want or need an app. Personal preference, I suppose.
No comments:
Post a Comment