Apple markets its new AirPods feature as being able to translate other languages directly in your ears. When Matteo Wong tested out the tool, it was barely able to help him buy flowers or tamales. theatln.tc/VnzWdOSK
Stopping for breakfast in the largely Hispanic Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Wong put his AirPods in to try Apple’s new “Live Translation” feature. In his interaction with a Spanish-speaking vendor, his AirPods struggled to capture the woman’s voice because it picked up too much ambient noise. The final translation contained errors—and even a word that doesn’t exist: “Green sauce, slices with cheese, slices with chicken, Molly, juaquillo.”
“That final word is neither translated nor a word, but I took it to mean ‘guajillo,’ a kind of chili pepper,” Wong writes. “The vendor said some other things that were unintelligible because of the overlap between her live speech and the lagging translation. Finally, I assumed that ‘Molly’ was a bad translation of ‘mole,’ the sauce, but I didn’t want to risk a morning dose of MDMA in the off chance that Apple was right. I opted for the ‘salsa verde.’”
Wong found that sound wasn’t the only confounding factor the AirPods had: Live Translation specifically notes that the Spanish it translates is the kind spoken in Spain, not the kind spoken in Mexico or anywhere else in Latin America and the Caribbean. “Although my technical problems could not be chalked up to vocabulary alone, it is true that several of the words that my AirPods stumbled on were those that are specifically rooted in Mexican Spanish: ‘rajas,’ ‘guajillo,’ ‘mole,’ ‘cempasúchil.’”
“Still, even with these limitations in mind, Live Translation could have provided an impressive synthesis of AI software with existing hardware, a sort of science-fiction dream. It does not,” Wong continues.
🎨: @/akshitachandra / Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic
The Atlantic
Apple markets its new AirPods feature as being able to translate other languages directly in your ears. When Matteo Wong tested out the tool, it was barely able to help him buy flowers or tamales. theatln.tc/VnzWdOSK
Stopping for breakfast in the largely Hispanic Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Wong put his AirPods in to try Apple’s new “Live Translation” feature. In his interaction with a Spanish-speaking vendor, his AirPods struggled to capture the woman’s voice because it picked up too much ambient noise. The final translation contained errors—and even a word that doesn’t exist: “Green sauce, slices with cheese, slices with chicken, Molly, juaquillo.”
“That final word is neither translated nor a word, but I took it to mean ‘guajillo,’ a kind of chili pepper,” Wong writes. “The vendor said some other things that were unintelligible because of the overlap between her live speech and the lagging translation. Finally, I assumed that ‘Molly’ was a bad translation of ‘mole,’ the sauce, but I didn’t want to risk a morning dose of MDMA in the off chance that Apple was right. I opted for the ‘salsa verde.’”
Wong found that sound wasn’t the only confounding factor the AirPods had: Live Translation specifically notes that the Spanish it translates is the kind spoken in Spain, not the kind spoken in Mexico or anywhere else in Latin America and the Caribbean. “Although my technical problems could not be chalked up to vocabulary alone, it is true that several of the words that my AirPods stumbled on were those that are specifically rooted in Mexican Spanish: ‘rajas,’ ‘guajillo,’ ‘mole,’ ‘cempasúchil.’”
“Still, even with these limitations in mind, Live Translation could have provided an impressive synthesis of AI software with existing hardware, a sort of science-fiction dream. It does not,” Wong continues.
🎨: @/akshitachandra / Akshita Chandra / The Atlantic
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