Taiwanese netizens have found another application for Google Translate: using the “Listen” function to generate fun beats from random Chinese characters.
Although not the first to discover the gimmick — a user of todayilearned on Reddit.com posted a way to use the Google translation tool’s “Listen” function to beatbox in German on Nov. 28 last year — Taiwanese netizens have adopted it to the Chinese language and developed variations of the idea.
“It’s like using Google Translate to tell a joke for you, but it’s even more fun than that,” said Alice Chen, one of hundreds of Web users getting a kick out of the novel use of the Web site.
The approach is simple: it completely bypasses Google Translate’s main translating function, relying simply on entering Chinese characters to create beatbox sounds.
Some netizens add blanks and punctuation marks to generate a sequence with the right beat to make the Web site “sing” along with pop songs — in Mandarin, Taiwanese (also known as Hoklo) and even Cantonese.
One netizen even generated a sequence that took advantage of the site’s rigid pronunciation to imitate the sound of an engine that couldn’t start.
In the four days since the concept was posted, there have been more than 400 comments and 6,000 “likes” on a Facebook page that features odd and interesting information.
“The development team of Google Translate would never have thought of this,” a netizen said, with some even joking that the company should consider launching a virtual performer.
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