Google translation ... 1 2 3 Go!
May 18, 2011 10:06 AM   Subscribe

 
I'm singing this whilst planking.
Weekly meme quota: 100%.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:33 AM on May 18, 2011 [2 favorites]


"ITS PORTAL 2, OH SHIT"
posted by azarbayejani at 10:34 AM on May 18, 2011


Someday the relentless autotuning will stop. But today is not that day.

This is one of those times, though, where it seems almost ridiculously perfect for the overall concept.

Love how the piano solo suddenly, against all expectations, reveals this song to be pop jazz and not just pop. I chuckled at the unlikely brilliance of that.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 10:36 AM on May 18, 2011 [2 favorites]


Google Autotune sings with more verve and personality than about 90% of the Canto and Mando Pop performers out there (most of whom are painfully wooden and untalented).

I expect many endorsements for Vitasoy Milk, Biore Cosmetics, and G2000 Sportswear to follow shortly.
posted by helmutdog at 10:43 AM on May 18, 2011


This seems to be a TV spot on the composer and the song.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 10:44 AM on May 18, 2011


I thought this was pretty cute, although I was kind of hoping for the song to be sung in Taiwanese, which would be difficult as Google Translate doesn't have such an option.

My Chinese isn't awesome but one fun fact from the linked TV spot is that it took him about 20 hours to create it.
posted by zix at 11:20 AM on May 18, 2011


What's really cool, IMO is that if you type in English, but say it's Chinese, the read aloud feature will speak with a Chinese accent. I did notice that if words were left untranslated, they would be spoken with the accent of the language you translate into.

But I didn't realize it would do it to the input as well. It's actually a lot more fun then it should be :P
posted by delmoi at 11:24 AM on May 18, 2011 [1 favorite]


"than", delmoi, "than".

:-)

posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:27 AM on May 18, 2011


This is so fun. Love it.
posted by nickyskye at 4:08 PM on May 18, 2011


I'm singing this whilst planking.

I would love to see Hitler losing it over you listening to this while planking. That would be good internet.
posted by the noob at 5:06 PM on May 18, 2011


What's really cool, IMO is that if you type in English, but say it's Chinese, the read aloud feature will speak with a Chinese accent. I did notice that if words were left untranslated, they would be spoken with the accent of the language you translate into.

Simply interpreting an English word in the local phonetics kind of is a translation of many words. I'm in Poland at the moment, and on many occasions have encountered people saying words that are theoretically from my native tongue, but which I don't recognize (chamboorgoor for hamburger, veefee for wifi, ve-tse for WC).

This is people speaking strictly Polish, not simply trying to speak English but with a thick slavic accent. Before this little journey, I had barely any grasp of how influential American culture was around the globe, or that my language was a lingua franca. I have Polish friends with Greek roommates that speak English with one another, because the Greeks don't speak Polish, and the Poles no Greek. My girlfriend spends all day at work speaking with Arabs, and Continental Europeans, and Japanese, people from every continent, and everything is done in English, except one lady in Spain with whom she has to speak very broken Italian, because she knows only Spanish, and Italian (so my girlfriend claims) is "close enough" if you pick your words carefully.

For Poles, and for a lot of people around the world, learning English is the most important thing they can do academically. It unlocks an entire world of possibilities that would be otherwise completely unavailable to them. I count my lucky stars that the one language I do actually speak is English. If it were anything else except some other slavic tongue, or perhaps German, it would have been unfathomably more difficult to acclimate myself while I learned enough Polish to do simple things like buy meat and bus tickets.
posted by LiteOpera at 12:31 AM on May 19, 2011


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