Into the Driver's Seat

Whether you’re a frequent traveler, simply learning a new language, or interacting with someone who speaks in a different language, Siri for iOS now has the fantastic ability to translate between languages on the fly. For example, you can ask Siri to say “I need a taxi ride to the airport” in French, and Siri will not only instantly translate that for you in written text, but also say it aloud.

Essentially you can think of of Siri on iPhone or iPad as a digital translator that is always with you, and it works to translate between English, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, French, German, and Italian.

Try it out yourself, it works really well and is quite fast.

Via John Evans, Yuly Asencion, Dennis Swender, Jim Lerman

The Google Translate app offers many ways to connect with people across language barriers including voice, conversation, camera and offline modes.

Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa)

Robin Good: Amara / Universal Subtitles is a free web-based service that allows anyone to easily sub-title and add captions to any video. 

 

As long as you have a URL of a published video, Amara makes it very easy to caption it. The clip may be on a video sharing site or embedded in custom video player and Amara can still get to it.

 

Amara is made up of three main parts:

 

a) A subtitle creation and viewing tool (aka the widget)

b) A collaborative subtitling website

 

c) An open protocol for subtitle search/delivery

 

All tools inside Amara are free and open-source.

 

Supported video players and video sharing sites include:

 

Flowplayer JW Player Firefox native player Chrome native player
  YouTube Vimeo Dailymotion blip.tv

 

See examples: http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/watch/ ;

 

To start subtitling now, go here: http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/create/  ;

 

FAQ: http://support.universalsubtitles.org/solution/categories/13504/folders/21914 ;

 

Find out more: http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en ;

Via Robin Good, 173 Sud, michel verstrepen, Gust MEES

The Google Translate app offers many ways to connect with people across language barriers including voice, conversation, camera and offline modes.

Via Tom D'Amico (@TDOttawa) , Mohammed Hassim