2 June 2009 - 21:20Message translation in GMail

You probably have read about how GMail added a new feature that lets you read messages written in a different language, language that you may not understand, by having them translated into your language. This is a pretty interesting feature that will not get much adoption outside Google labs, the main reason for this being not the quality of the translation (not great) but rather the fact most people need to initiate some sort of contact in order to start exchanging emails.

All this aside, it is a pretty interesting proposition from Google and leaves you wondering about how would a group of persons that communicate with one another by using the translator package just added to GMail outside GMail, let’s say in a face-to-face environment (let’s say a group of experts from various places , all speaking a different language attending the same conference). Would they be emailing each other while seated at the same table, given that they do not speak a common language (*)?
A pretty weird feeling is setting in: you may end up having relationships with people only thru this virtual medium which negates all other forms of communication. The language barrier will be replaced by an expressiveness barrier: many things will not be able to be expressed thru this medium and will be left-out.

* BTW, the message used in the TechCrunch example is a very good example of a message that would never get translated because it would never be written in a different language: if you want to invite a hiking buddy out for a walk you would probably want to be able to communicate with him/her in a commonlanguage, not thru the GMail translator… I wonder what a walk thru a park is like when you need to drag along GMail (preferably deployed on your iPhone) in order to talk to someone. Surreal…