Honestly, it's hard to imagine a world without Google Translate these days. I used to use it a fair bit for work when I needed to double check something for my FLSA requirements, and it's interesting to reminisce on how it's evolved from just a simple "how do you say this word" old website into the elaborate, nuance understanding language tool it is today.
You can use the app to have a full on conversation with someone. You can use the app to use the camera and live translate text it sees (not going to admit to having to have used that during a proficiency exam).
And when you think about it, this 'how can I understand what you're saying so I can tell you how to say it in a way someone else understands it' is some fundamental pieces to what we use today in AI. I remember articles talking about how Google's Translate 'invented' a language to be that intermediary language; so that to translate from English to Spanish, it was taking that English and translating it to some language it knows and understand and then correlates how that language than translates to Spanish. Interesting stuff.
20 years later ... over 1 billion users.
And, there's that 'practice' button ... I don't use it for French, as I no longer am worrying about keeping that language up, but I'd love it if it expanded to Gaidhlig.
https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/translate/fun-facts-google-translate-20-years/
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