Google Video Captures the Beauty and Difficulty of Translation

To promote Google Input, a virtual keyboard that lets you type using keyboards standard in other languages, Google released a video that underlines the difficulty of translating different words, particularly emotions.

Three speakers — one of Mandarin, another of Fiji Hindi and a third of Greek — attempt to describe one word in their respective languages that lacks an obvious English synonym. The words are all positive: one is an approximation of “smells good,” the other a cozy feeling produced by intimate conversation with friends; the third a kind of passionate absorption produced by doing what you love. Each word celebrates something wonderful about the cultures that produced them.

Google Input is available as an application for Windows, an extension for Chrome and an app for Android. It allows you to type as if you were using a keyboard standard to another region — say, France or Vietnam. You can see the extension in action in the screenshot below: