NAN WANG

Text-Image Translator is an interactive program that translated texts in various languages into images. It generates images (still images or GIFs) by using information from the internet, accessed through Google Search Services. Users can input text, have it translated into different languages, and generate corresponding images.

Language and cultural barriers still exist even in such a globalized world. Languages, as the most effective way of exchanging memory and thoughts, made them shareable and not shareable at the same time. One concept can arouse distinguish feelings in different languages. We may never be able to fully understand what a word really means to another culture, despite the existence of thousands of kinds of dictionaries or Google or Wikipedia. “Text-Image Translator” is an attempt to step over the barriers or gaps in languages and cultures. It creates the possibility to observe and understand the connections and differences through abstract images.

Collecting information from the Internet through Google Search, “Translator” is also a reflection of the relationship between Internet culture and human cognition. In such a networked era, we are not only shaping the information but are also shaped by it. The results that “Translator” gives are always changing as time goes by. The archives of images that are generated by the translator can be considered as the records that show the changes in Internet culture and cognition.