Skip to main content

Activity: Writing a translation program in Scratch

Scratch 3 the gift that keeps on giving; including the new extensions are Text to Speech and Translate; Text to speech - does as the name suggests, turns typed in phrases into speech via Amazon Web Services. Translate using Google (and I assume Google Translate?) to translate text between different languages.


As an experiment, I wanted to play with clapping my hands, have Scratch the Cat ask me to enter a phrase and then convert that into French, German and Spanish with different voices. The resulting code is shown below.

It is all started by a loud noise like a hand clap. The two extensions have been added to the blocks and are ready to go. The voice is initially set to Alto and the text-speech block has had the phrase "Please enter a phrase" typed in and says this. The ask block has the same question permanently set and the answer produced gets feed into the translations. 

The remaining blocks do essentially the same thing
- change the voice;
- take the phrase typed in (via answer) and convert to the language of choice;
- wait a second.


It is great fun, I am not sure all the languages work but what is there is cool to play with. In an ideal world instead of typing the phrase it would be great to just say the phrase...maybe in the future. 

The code is available at https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/282312832/.

 Please feel free to add comments below and share how you have used it.



All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with. Twitter @scottturneruon

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Problem Solving Open educational Resource

  Another new Open Education Resource (OER) has been made available by the School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton. Problem-Solving Author: Dr Scott Turner http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19001 Details These mini lectures are intended for undergraduate computing students, for providing simple steps in problem solving before the students learn a programming language. Problem-Solving and Programming is a common first year undergraduate module on the BSc Computing Programme at the University of Northampton. This material was taken from the problem solving part of the module and provides an introduction to five topics in problem-solving. The resource can be found at:  http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19001 After one week on JORUM  93 downloads  and  12 views  of the OER.
Post a Comment
Read more

Problem-Solving and Creativity in Engineering

Jonathan Adams, Phil Picton and Stefan Kaczmarczyk from the School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton in collaboration with Peter Demian from Loughborough University have recently published a paper in the Journal   Enhancing the Learner Experience in Higher Education  entitled " Problem solving and creativity in Engineering: turning novices into professionals ". Abstract: Recent UK and European benchmarks for both undergraduate and professional engineers highlight the importance of problem solving skills. They additionally identify creativity as an important capacity alongside problem solving for both novices and professionals. But, how can we develop and encourage these important skills in undergraduate engineers? For many years researchers have explored how the differences between novices and experts might show educators techniques for improving the problem solving abilities of their students. Whilst it is often a...
Post a Comment
Read more

10 most view post on the problem-solving blog - April 2020

Building an artificial neuron in Scratch Build yourself a Crumble Eggbot from junk Full details at http://bit.ly/2yZ3dZT There was three inspirations for this project ·Eggbot - http://www.instructables.com/id/Plastic-Egg-Bot/?utm_content=buffer9b065&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer  ·Femi Owolade supported by Nic Hughes ran a session at Mozilla Festival 2016 using the Crumble’s to make a wheeled robot. ·The junkbot project https://junkbots.blogspot.co.uk/  Kit ·Kinder Egg (without the Chocolate and toy) · Crumble   also available at  https://redfernelectronics.co.uk/crumble/  · 4x Crocodile clips and leads  · Battery pack  and 3xAA · Vibrating motor  ·Tape (lots of) Free Computing Resource: Junkbots and Scratch 1 The Junkbots project has been running for a number of years as an initiative to bring sustainability, computing and engineering together by building bots out o...
Post a Comment
Read more