WCI Language Translator 2.0 Review

A built-in language translator is something I've always thought would be a useful add-on to Windows Mobile. I mean what better way to "integrate" and unify your user base than to provide a simple, effective ability to translate mobile content into multiple languages on the fly? It would tear down a significant barrier to global information sharing for sure. WCI Translator is a simple tool for basic sentence and phrase translation, but it's certainly not ready to hook into any other programs yet...maybe in the future...

Install:

The installation was pretty simple. Download the version you wish to run (English-to-Spanish in my case), of which, there are only 3 languages supported (all translate to English or vice versa): German, Spanish, and French. The program includes large dictionary files that total up to about 6M of space, so I installed it to a storage card, and had no problems with it. There is no desktop installer apparently, so even if you download to your desktop, you will still have to copy it via Active Sync to your handheld, and select/tap the "cab" file in the file explorer application in WM. The software runs on WM2003, and higher devices (I ran it on 6.1). I could find no trial copies at the site, but if you want to test the translation engine, the WCI website has an online web-version here.

Web Interface...

Program Use:

WCI is a very simple program as you can see below/above. You select the translation type--English to Spanish or Spanish to English, for example. Then type in words, phrases, or complete sentences (up to 250 characters, or around 60-70 words) in the upper text entry box. Proper grammar and spelling will provide more accurate results. Select the "Translate" button, and the software will return your translated result in the second text block in the lower half of the screen. You can cut/paste text from other applications using the SIP keyboard on a touch-screen device (ctrl-c, and ctrl-v), but the WCI fields do not support tap-n-hold options. This an easy tweak to the application, and one I would recommend. You can translate thus back-n-forth to English and whatever other language pack you have purchased. It appears you have to install the different language versions separately. If a word is not known to the dictionary, it will not be translated and preceeded in the results windows by "##" symbols.

Translate away...isn't that cute how it translated "Windows Mobile"

Conclusion: This is a very simple app, admittedly, but that's okay, as it's more the translation I'm worried about. I would only use it to translate simple phrases and such (I'm trying to learn more Spanish), and don't really need a lot of bells-n-whistles. My wife is fluent in both English and Spanish having learned English as a second language as a child (I envy her that), and some of her family mainly speaks Spanish. However, we have had some issues with the translations of the WCI program. When I try to say the WCI Spanish translations to my wife, she looks at me like I'm from another planet. My pronunciation is pretty horrible, si, but after a while she started to look more closely at the actual translation in suspicion (Ahh, Dios Mio!!). Uhh, I'd say she disagrees with several of the responses from WCI. For instance, consider the English question:

How far is it to the nearest bus station?

My wife would translate this to:

Que lejos esta la estacion mas cerca de autobus?

WCI Translation:

¿ Cuánto se tarda a la estación de más cercana autobus?

Well, my wife is of Mexican heritage, so it's possible she isn't speaking a pure Spanish root form of the language (though I would not say that to her face or our familia), BUT it seems like even to my uneducated eye, the word "tarda" in the WCI translation is not accurate for this phrase. I asked how "far" not how "long", so I'm inclined to agree more with my wife's translation (and the use of the word "lejos" instead), in this case. It turns out that "lejos" is not even in the WCI dictionary, which I looked up in my handy "Harrap's Concise Spanish" dictionary. There were also other situations where certain words in a sentence would be placed in a grammatically incorrect order or mis-translated. I think WCI might seriously want to look into tweaking these kinds of problems. Bad translators have been blamed for starting wars. So, maybe someday we'll have mobile devices that automagically translate everything we say, and provide easy and instant communication to our world neighbors, but that day isn't today! Still, I'm intrigued that this application (or one like it) might grow into a truly robust mobile language tool. One that could translate web surfing, chats, documents, and the like all with full voice recogintion and integration features. WCI Translator could be the little acorn that becomes the oak. First, though they need to tweak their translator a bit.

To learn more about WCI translation software and try out their on-line translator, go here.