Well, Google it’s been quite a ride–from your humble beginnings as a minimalistic search wonder to your ubiquitous email service to your 1984esque photographing every block in the industrialized world. But only now has the primary use of your suite of web-based tools been realized: tricking the vocalization function of Google Translate into beatboxing.
As far as I can tell, this reddit user was the first person to figure out that you can trick Google Translate into interpreting various nonsense words (“pv zk pv pv zk pv zk”) into very beatboxy notes. To make it work, one of the languages has to be German (if you just paste some “notes” in the first translate box, Google automatically detects most of the words as German). Then, just click “listen.”
It’s like the Fat Boys are living in your computer.
This little hacklette has become so popular that if you google the phrase “google beatbox,” the first link is Google Translate.
Many others have globbed on to the trick with their own library of sounds (here and here, for example). But it’s kind of fun to experiment around yourself to see what you can make one of the world’s largest corporations do against its will.
Thanks, internet.
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