Late last week the Google Translate team unveiled the beta
version of a revolutionary app for the Chrome browser. It has the potential to change
the way students, businesses, and just about anyone with an interest, learn
languages. Language Immersion for Google Chrome does just what the name
implies; it integrates language immersion study techniques into the Chrome
browser as a user is viewing web pages.
Most of the best known language immersion programs (Rosetta
Stone, Berlitz, Assimil, etc.) are either in-classroom, book or interactive CD
format. The fact that Google’s app steps into the realm of a tool most people
use every day; the web browser; makes the idea even more intriguing to me. The
potential for its use is great and, unlike the aforementioned paid programs, Google’s
app is very cost effective at the low, low price of free.
Don’t get me wrong. When the other immersion techniques are
employed properly, they can be extremely effective. What I am really getting at
is that the deployment of this app opens up the potential benefits of immersion
learning to a whole new world of people including students, businesses and the
like.
Just think of it. You could build your workforce to be a
virtual army of somewhat functional polyglots during normal everyday research
and work on the web. Chuck in accounting could learn a bit about Mandarin
working in the finance cloud (knowing that it is probably the future language
of finance). Jackie, your lead North American salesperson could learn French to
break into the untapped Quebec market during her regularly scheduled data
mining time each day.
The other advantage to using language immersion software and
making it free to the public is that those who had say, 6 years of a language
in high school and college, but haven’t used it that much can brush up and
possibly regain some level of fluency. That would make an already good employee
even better in my eyes because I have a whole new skill set I can leverage into
my plan of attack. Say Chuck from the example above had studied Eastern
languages alongside his accounting degree. Say he brushes up on that Mandarin.
Chuck is now in charge of our big RFP in Shanghai. Maybe someday he’ll be in
charge of our China operations.
OK so maybe these scenarios are a bit farfetched. But are
they really?
The app is not perfect but I have a feeling it soon will be
with input from users and some more programming from the Google Translate team.
They’ve already developed pretty darn good automatic translation feature for
Gmail. Google admittedly says all translations might not be 100% accurate. For
instance, the app translated a phrase about a ‘ key industry’ professional in
Intermediate Spanish to ‘clave de la industria.’ The phrase was grammatically
correct but probably could be said a better way and more colorfully in the
context of the sentence should the whole thing have been in Spanish. The same could be said for the French translations.
Grammatically correct is good enough for business though
right?
The point I am trying to make here isn’t that the app is
flawed. To the contrary, the app is pretty solid. If I were to send my top
salespeople to France for a big industry summit in 6 months, I would have them
train on this app. Would they become masters of français in that amount of
time? Probably not. Would they likely pick up some key phrases to communicate
with others and bring some humanity and respect back in to the conversation
with those in the host country? Absolutely.
This very minute, I can take out my smart phone, fire up a
translator app that will listen to the person talking to me in any one of a
number of languages and translate it into English. I then can speak into the
phone to answer them, with very little effort. The translations are not always
accurate and sometimes comical to both speakers involved. That being said, a
$1.99 (USD) app on my phone can help overcome the language barrier with
relative ease but it isn’t very personal.
Free language immersion apps seem as if they just might be a
way to bridge the gap between the emotionless technology and the animation of
humanity.
Software such as this has the potential to do good on so
many levels. It helps bring that human touch and personality back into
conversations between individuals. It can lift employees up to a new level
within a business to the benefit not only the business, but to the employee as
well. It can give your organization the reputation for being a global
enterprise for reasons other than having office locations all over the world.
It can expand the number of quality trade show and conference opportunities for
you and your company. Heck, it can help open markets that were previously
closed off via a quick conversation at one of those foreign trade shows.
One thing is for certain. All the technology in the world
can’t replace a warm blooded handshake and a greeting in a native tongue. Language
immersion training is beneficial to business because it brings a human element
into the conversation. And even if the conversation is a little off or a little
disjointed, it will go miles beyond what a machine voice pointed at your face
can do in the relationship building process.
It’s my opinion that, even if we can develop the Universal
translator for Ensign Hoshi (which oddly enough had emotions and inflections
down pretty well), today’s companies should use this technology and encourage
their workforce to immerse themselves into language learning during the course
of their daily work. It just might provide that extra ounce of personalization
to make your global organization even more successful.
