LexiConversion: An Inline Translator For a Chat Application

LEXICONVERSION:AN INLINE TRANSLATOR FOR A CHAT APPLICATION

By Team Rhotic Vowels

Video

Team Rhotic Vowels

Members:Hailey Oei (Senior, Computer Science major)Felicia Chen (Junior, Computer Science major)Eyobe Bisrat (Senior, Computer Science major)Krithi Ramaswamy (Senior, Computer Science major)

Problem MotivationMotivated by the inefficiency in multilingual communication

and the popularity of learning other languages (esp with Rosetta Stone, heritage speakers)

Problem Description-No inline translator for mobile chatting application -- just on

the desktop version of Skype/Facebook

-Have to open up browser or Google Translate app to translate from Kakaotalk/text message

-Very slow!

Review of Past Work (Facebook)

Review of Past Work (Skype)

Review of Past Work (myLanguage)

Review of Past Work Cont.● Google Translate App● Bing translator● Firefox plug-in -- “Inline Translator”● Bubble Translate for Google Chrome● Chrome browser automatic translation of a page

Solution & Uniqueness

- Our proposed solution aims to integrate inline translation to an Android chat application, using a limited number of button presses.

-Utilize Bing’s free, robust translation database

TargetsBrainstorming, we named our target users as ● foreign language teachers● immigrants● penpals● language learners (perhaps taught by the teachers)

*They all have a need to communicate in other languages.

After team discussions, we narrowed our target users down to● adults● teenagers

who may be learning a different language, are bilingual but more fluent in another language, or who have friends who speak a different language.

Benefits

- Mistakes in button-presses and signs of frustration as they used their smartphones to execute the lengthy task.

- In the digital age, LexiConversion will be a new way to communicate with friends of different languages, cultures and backgrounds.

-Translations will be integrated to chat so that speaking with friends, colleagues, etc with language barriers will no longer hinder communication

Two formative research methods- Interview We ran an interview of sorts in which we generated a small prompt in English.

In our study, we included a variety of subjects who are speakers of English and another language and asked them to translate an informal text message, in the way it would sound most natural in their native language.

- ObservationWe walked around the subjects and observed for mistakes in button-presses

and signs of frustration as they used their smartphones to execute the lengthy task.

InterviewMessage:

"Hey friend. How’s it going? Can you do this task? Thanks for the help."

Our participants were people who are bilingual, but more fluent in English (generally heritage speakers).

-Mostly took between 15 and 60 seconds to translate using Google/Bing

ConclusionLearning a language requires speaking in it; digitally this is

achievable in a smartphone application.

Currently digitally-assisted translation is tedious; LexiConversion aims to change that.