I'm not who you replied to, but I have such a story.
I was in southern China for a couple weeks, using Google Translate to try to talk to locals sometimes. The voice-to-voice feature seemed useful and more approachable than asking someone to type on my phone. I'd often start by saying "Talk into the phone and it will translate."
This did not go well. People seemed bewildered, utterly unwilling to try it out. Some people already knew what I was doing but the rest seemed to think I was crazy. One or two tried taking the phone and holding it to their ear like they were going to have a normal phone conversation with someone far away.
I later found out that Google had translated my phrase as something like "There is a phone call for you."
> I later found out that Google had translated my phrase as something like "There is a phone call for you."
Language learning stories are always amazing because the perpetrator of the comedy is almost always entirely oblivious. Love your story.
My shining moment when I was learning Portuguese... I went to the pharmacy because I'd hurt my ankles hiking. They kept everything behind the counter, so I asked for some painkillers that would work for ankle pain.
The cashier gave me the weirdest look and the rest of the line started giggling. Eventually, after several attempts at repetition and variation, they gave me some ibuprofen - perfect. As I was leaving I processed my mistake - I'd accidentally swapped calcanhares (ankles) for calcinhas (panties), so my series of requests (as a male) had come out as: "My panties are killing me, do you have anything to help? ... Sorry, my Portuguese...I'll try again: My panties. Pan-ties. Pain. Pain in my panties. Panties pain. Medicine?"
Fun fact: Quality of Google translate and Google search in Simplified Chinese and Google maps in mainland China has plummeted over the past decade. Barely usable if at all. I would suggest avoid them at all cost for your peace of mind
I've found ChatGPT 4o (the voice one) to be useful, I just need to prompt it first by saying `Whatever you hear in Chinese, say in English, whatever you hear in English, say in Chinese`. It refuses to cooperate if you tell it to be a live translator.
Anyways, it seems to understand context really well, I tried it out with a Chinese person and they said it worked really well.
It even works for Croatian which is awesome as it is a really small language that anything voice-related usually does not work with.
I was in southern China for a couple weeks, using Google Translate to try to talk to locals sometimes. The voice-to-voice feature seemed useful and more approachable than asking someone to type on my phone. I'd often start by saying "Talk into the phone and it will translate."
This did not go well. People seemed bewildered, utterly unwilling to try it out. Some people already knew what I was doing but the rest seemed to think I was crazy. One or two tried taking the phone and holding it to their ear like they were going to have a normal phone conversation with someone far away.
I later found out that Google had translated my phrase as something like "There is a phone call for you."