How to Use “Aunt Rosie” the Google Wave Translation Bot

Google Wave largely appeals as a collaboration tool. This is really helpful for businesses and organizations who need to brainstorm, communicate, and bounce ideas off of each other in real-time. Thankfully, Google Wave promises to have a variety of tools available to make collaborating as easy and natural as possible.

One of these tools is “Aunt Rosie” the translation robot. Aunt Rosie gives you the ability to communicate with someone who might even speak a different language than you. Whatever you type is translated into the language of your choice. Here’s how you can do it.

First, you’ll need to add “aunt-rosie@appspot.com” to your contacts list.

Then, you’ll need to create a new wave and add “aunt-rosie@appspot.com” to the wave.

Once you start typing something, Rosy will load and you’ll get a drop down box to select the language you would like to translate into. You’ll notice there is quite a selection of languages available. As you’ll see in the picture below, I selected Spanish.

If you choose to reply with a new blip within the wave, unfortunately, you will have to reselect the language you’d like to translate into. However, one of the advantages of Aunt Rosie over other translation bots (e.g. Translabot) is that Aunt Rosie translates what you type in real-time. This eliminates the need to press a “translate” button when you are finished typing.

For the most part, I’ve found Aunt Rosie to work pretty well. I have noticed for some languages that not all my words will translate, but this is expected from any translator from what I’ve experienced.

What do you think of Aunt Rosie?