Unlocking compliments with Google Translate

I just added a new sketch by Ari Prasetyo to the Studio’s gallery. If you look at the source code of this sketch, you’ll see that all of the comments and variable names are written in Indonesian. A few months ago, humphd mentioned that he was relying on Google Translate to understand what people were saying about the Processing.js project. I’m starting to have a similar experience with Sketchpad (my little corner of the ecosystem), and I have to say, it’s a lot of fun!

In the past week, I translated a Korean tweet, a French blog post, these Indonesian explanations, and many of the Spanish sketches in one of the new private studios. My favorite part of Google’s tool is that it automatically detects the source language. It deciphers compliments in languages that I can’t even recognize. I find it both gratifying and embarrassing that I actually need this magical feature.