This is pretty amazing.
Guess Spanish teachers all across the country now have to add “No iphones in class on test day” to their syllabus.
Word Lens
by John Cole| 39 Comments
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Word Lens
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WereBear
Like, teenagers won’t cheat? Given the chance?
They don’t know better. Yet.
AAA Bonds
Another amazing thing: your government is about to offer someone who leaked classified information a plea bargain, so that it can indict the journalist who reproduced the information.
AAA Bonds
My school had all the 1-3 level language courses do exams on the same day, during the same period. I have to assume there was a reason for that.
Baud
Me gusta.
Comrade Luke
As long as they don’t give tests from the test bank.
(gag)
AAA Bonds
Check this:
No weed pass, no cannabis, Dutch tell foreigners
In reaction to drug-related crimes, the Netherlands is about to force the creation of an illegal drug market for tourists within its legal drug market for locals.
That should work, right?
Dennis SGMM
Apps: mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! In a decade or so all you will have to do is take out a cell phone tower to see hundreds of people go stupid. I’m guessing that taking out cell phone towers will replace stepping on anthills for good clean fun.
adolphus
@Dennis SGMM:
You clearly didn’t watch the video. It doesn’t need a cell phone or internet connection to work, or so it claims.
Randy Paul
As someone who is fluent in one other language and has decent conversational skills in two others, there is a loit more to translating than just stringing words together.
This may help a few piss poor marginal students keep from failing, but IMHO one only gains fluency in a language when you immerse yourself in it to the point you can think and dream in the other language.
WereBear
@AAA Bonds: Here I was thinking the Dutch had crossed over to the Light Side.
But then, they invented apartheid, didn’t they?
So close, and yet so far.
Chyron HR
Is this the singularity?
AAA Bonds
We’re collectivizing knowledge, but we’re not getting any smarter. Just more “informed”.
What I mean is: sneak a prank translation into this thing and teachers would be golden for detecting cheaters. That’s how they used to catch leakers, back in the day.
Plus, an entire generation of future State Department officials would grow up believing that your girlfriend’s name means “sexy” in Russian.
kdaug
@Chyron HR: Not yet, mate. That happens when they add voice translation, and every international conversation on earth is also translated into binary and surreptitiously logged.
A year or two out. Still time to stock your bunker.
Triassic Sands
@AAA Bonds:
I heard a discussion on the radio today in which a US government official (State Dept. I think) argued that countries like China and Iran want government control of the Internet because they oppose the free exchange of information.
I gagged faster than I could say Wikileaks.
I forget which government it was, but the other day the NYTimes ran an article about how some government was trying to figure out a way to try Assange for treason. Which government could that have been, I wonder?
bago
I’m going home from a 3G movie after working on cloud services to wirelessly connect my Tron-troller to my xbox with kinect while listening to techno on my Bluetooth headset. Sent from my iPhone.
Jim, Once
I’m recently retired – but my last three or four years of teaching, all cell phones were turned off during class. And on test days, the phones were collected and placed in a basket, to be picked up at the end of the class period. I realize that this is probably what every teacher you know does nowadays – but early on, it was tough to recognize just how cleverly the little boogers were using those phones, and then to implement strategies to keep it from happening.
Edit: I did let them turn the phones on to look up the meanings of their assigned vocabulary words. It was a big thrill for them.
Gwangung
Rest of the world might care about that; Americans surely don’t.
kdaug
Have I told y’all about my vacation cave? Just got the firepit upgrade (with the optional metal grate)!
DougJ
@Dennis SGMM:
Now what do you have to do to see hundreds of people go stupid? Anything besides go out in public?
WereBear
Okay, listen.
There’s information, then there’s knowledge, then there’s wisdom.
Then there’s stuff after that.
No point in telling anyone under twenty. Or, much over sixty.
kdaug
@WereBear: Then there’s navel lint. And furballs your cat puked up.
Not sure where you’re going here.
Jim, Once
@WereBear:
Glad to hear it – I can stop learning now? Thanks.
WereBear
No, I’m just saying (from real world experience) a lot of people after sixty say, “I”m done. Reboot me.”
And there is a process for a hard reboot, but it’s called death. Not a lot of people step right up and sign on the dotted line.
If anyone is not one of them, kudos.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
I didn’t understand Spanish – until Word Lens.
Works as advertised.
.
.
SiubhanDuinne
@WereBear: As a 68-year-old, I would like to think you’re wrong here.
CircleSquared
@Randy Paul: Yep. And it’s more fun to stumble in someone else’s language than to advertise you’re too lazy to even attempt it, says someone who spoke enough Spanish to survive in a no-English spoken zone for 3 weeks. I felt so smart when I realized that we could all figure out simpler ways to say what we meant. And I felt–there’s no other word for it–loved by the people who worked to make their sentences simple so I could understand them.
Like a machine’s gonna do that?
SiubhanDuinne
@WereBear: Sorry, wrote mine before I saw your #23. I’m with you now.
“I’m not dead yet!!”
Dennis SGMM
@DougJ:
Ya’ got me.
Martin
Consider the value of this for people who are visually impaired. If it can read and translate foreign language writing, then it can read and vocalize any writing.
WereBear
@SiubhanDuinne: I feel better!
policomic
Yes, but it will be the teachers’ fault if the students sneak them in, anyway, since–as we have learned–humans’ natural, evolutionary imperative is to cheat if at all possible, and that the onus is 100% on teachers to maintain a never-ending struggle against technological innovations and students’ natural imperatives, otherwise they’re a bunch of fat, lazy, overpaid, tenured slackers.
Calouste
@Martin:
Obviously, you have never been to Wales.
kdaug
@policomic: This tech will be integrated into eyeglasses next. Then enhanced contacts. The groundwork’s being done now. And the dependence on the tech will become our vulnerability.
adolphus
How different is this really than thumbing through a translation dictionary in front of a sign except quicker? I suspect it can do simple signs and a menu, but anyone who has used Babel fish translations knows more complex text is never done quite right. It might help tourists find the bathroom and order the right thing on a menu, but it won’t help us have conversations. And I expect the more you use this in a foreign country, the less you will need it (just like a translation dictionary) as you learn basic vocabulary, color standards, iconography etc.
It’s training wheels for travelers that will eventually come off the more you interact with a community.
Bring it on….
gnomedad
@Dennis SGMM:
In one chapter of Charles Stross’s Accelerando, a character has his hyper-smartphone stolen and can barely remember who he is.
Brachiator
Universal translator, bitchez. Oh yeah, we’re getting there.
josephdietrich
Any teacher who hasn’t already banned smart phones on test day is hopelessly overmatched.
ArC
@kdaug – there already are voice translation apps. Look up Jibbigo on Youtube, for one…
Adah Goldsboro
Word Lens isnt working that good … It has a lot of mistakes and cant detect every word …