Nearly everyone has used an online translator at one point or another, myself included. If you count yourself among the linguistic corner-cutters, you are also likely one of the 99 percent of online translator users who realizes that these programs are generally terrible.

After feeding a few lines of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities back and forth between German and English, I got an interesting end result from where I started.

Original: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity…

The Back Translation: It was that the best of times, that were, which is worst of the times it was the age of intelligence, it was the age of the stupidity, it was the epoch of the faith, it was the epoch disbelievingness….

Yes, it did translate incredulity back to disbelievingness [sic].

Now as much as I find these translators more trouble than utility, they have improved tremendously over the years. In fact, I know of one site that downright impresses me.

That said, I was wary a few years ago when I saw Google had decided to make its foray into the online translation business. Google has always been a company to consistently put out a good product with far-reaching utility. This move seemed nothing more than a proverbial shot in the foot. After all, does anyone else remember the days of Yahoo’s acquisition of Babelfish from Altavista? I’m pretty sure Babelfish has seen about as much development as Altavista since then (i.e. not a lot).

Well, in my online stumblings, I came across a video where two ladies use Google’s Translation & Text To Speech (TTS) capabilities to order Indian food via phone in Hindi. I was completely impressed. Check out this video for yourself – it’s pretty cool. Maybe I misjudged you, Google.