Handwriting Feature Added to Google Translate Homepage

[Woodson]

www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2422295,00.asp

Google today rolled out its Google Translate handwriting feature for the Web, allowing users to draw the phrases or words they need translated when a keyboard can't do the trick.

Handwriting has been an option on the Google Translate Android app since Jan. 2012, but it is now available via the Google Translate website on the browser.



Imagine planning a trip to China, but not being able to read street signs or restaurant names. Instead of blindly choosing a direction or eatery, just draw the given characters on the Google Translate homepage to find their meaning.

To get started, choose the language you wish to translate, and then select the down arrow on the bottom left of the language box. Select the "Handwrite" option with the pencil and draw away in the pop-up box that appears.

"Suppose you see the Chinese expression '饺子' and want to know its meaning in English, but have no idea how to type these characters," Google product manager Xiangye Xiao said in a blog post. "Using the new handwriting input tool, you can simply draw these characters on your screen and instantly see the translation."

You can draw with your mouse, or with your finger if you have a touch-enabled PC.

Google Translate currently supports handwriting in 45 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Other text input tools like virtual keyboards, input method editors, and transliteration were added to Translate early last year.

[lachinatown]

What do you think about the Google's translate^{Click here}?

More work needs to be done on the translation. But the handwrite feature seems working good.

[Doug 周]

This is great news. Has anyone tried the OCR? I am not at my home workstation, but will it work with images or only text?

Whereas I love the COCR2, there is about 10% of the characters it cannot translate.

[lachinatown]

Google Translate now need a pinyin to Chinese character.

COCR works good, problem is to convert jpg file to bmp file, doesn't all bmp files.

[Doug 周]

I give up. Can someone provide a link to the site which had handwriting recognition module?

[Brad Powe]

Hello, DOuglas.

I'd like to know if it will work with OCR/jpeg files too.

Searching the PC Magazine website for "chinese handwriting input" gives you this page -

www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2422295,00.asp

If it doesn't work, you can find the page OK.

Brad

[Doug 周]

Brad,

Have you tried COCR2 ^click ?

I appreciate the link to the PC magazine write up, but how do you get to the Google page where you can write the characters like NCIKU ^click ?

[lachinatown]

Jul 26, 2013 19:40:07 GMT -5 lachinatown said:

What do you think about the Google's translate^{Click here}?

More work needs to be done on the translation. But the handwrite feature seems working good.

This is the link. You have to select Chinese (Simplified)-Handwrite on the left blue area input. So apparently if you write a Traditional Chinese character that has a simplified character, the program will not recognize the traditional character.

[Doug 周]

Thanks. My plug in's on my workstation was not working.

[laohuaqiao]

This is a very exciting new feature of Google translate!

After you have entered the text, clicking on the speaker icon in the original text box (lower right corner) you can hear the word/words spoken in mandarin and clicking on "Ä" to get the pinyin with tones.

For input, selecting the microphone icon, you can record spoken words, convert to Chinese text and then translate. This is voice recognition.
Then clicking on the speaker icon in the translated text, you can hear the translated text spoken. In effect, Google translate is an interpreter!