LG has launched an amusing (and for some, useful) application that enables you to translate over 2000 words teens tend to use when they’re sending text messages to regular English, and the other way around. The tool is called DTXTR and the aim is to let is keep you in the know of what these kids are txting bout these days, xactli.
Frankly, there are a lot of basic words that can’t be converted to ‘teen text’ with the tool yet, but you can always submit a term for inclusion in the glossary. And if you want to test your own mad txt skills, you can do a little quiz on the site to see if you’re up with the times or not.
Yesterday, the NY Times came out with an article on texting, with physicians and psychologists saying the increased usage of SMS by teens leads to “anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation”. Just imagine how much more of that you’d see if teens were to use full phrases and actual words in text messages!
great tool for parents……its sometimes necessary to keep an eye on kids
Parents should chill out and just let kids talk. Parents didn’t monitor conversations before cell phones, and for the most part kids turned out fine. I feel kids today grow up in a safety bubble, unable to learn from experience.
Sometimes?
sucks for kids though
Am I the only one that doesn’t use short hand leet speak , even when texting?
I don’t, either.
neither do I and I’m 14
This could be really useful when more words are added.
Now we just need Twitter support. Or maybe not.
Everyone realizes this was done with bot in IRC at least ten years prior, right?
hee hee this is nice.i love spying !
OMG! My kids talk lol speak and this doesn’t seem to understand it!
There are many more important things to worry about in the world. What code do our teens use in order to retain some privacy from snooping parents? Any code that will work. I have two teens in my world and they deserve respect and privacy, not a new piece of code that decrypts their comms.
Besides, it’s not smart enough. Once you figure out texting abbreviations, they’ll just switch to Cyrillic.
wtf, rotflmao… not in the dic!
You must be getting old.
Ah, the eradication of the English language is almost complete!
This thing’s terrible. I’ve tried around a dozen common words and none of them are found. All you’ve got to do is read out txtspeak phonetically and it becomes pretty clear anyway.
These messages short-cuts used by teens are sometimes really tough to decipher! Good app to know the lingo… but spying on kids doesn’t seems to be a very good idea!
I can see how parents who are concerned what their kids are up to would want to use this, but with how fast they come up with new acronyms and phrases, I don’t see how this tool can possibly stay current (unless LG has employed a boatload of 15 year olds).
Seriously?
I fail to understand spelling and grammar these days. The only teenagers whom spell that way, appear to be the “cool” ones. I honestly do NOT know a teenager whom doesn’t speak “dat wai” and does not smoke or/and drink. If I have children when I am older, I would get worried if they started writing like that.
I cannot describe in words how agitating and infuriating it is when children my age don’t know how to spell. It just shows how well they’re doing in school.
“i dnt go2 skl iz borng mahn.”
I really do wish for there to be more teenagers my age whom know how to spell and hold a conversation. Infact, my ex-best friend is a very good example of how not to spell or act. It seems that thirteen-nineteen year olds are obsessed with drinking, smoking, sex and illiteracy. If only it was the “olden days”. The teachers would not stand for anything inadequate…
I wishi it would “translate” whole sentences. Doing it one word at a time gets a little annoying. Fun program non-the-less!
“Yesterday, the NY Times came out with an article on texting, with physicians and psychologists saying the increased usage of SMS by teens leads to “anxiety, distraction in school, falling grades, repetitive stress injury and sleep deprivation”. Just imagine how much more of that you’d see if teens were to use full phrases and actual words in text messages!”
The study isn’t really saying that the use of SMS-language is causing anxiety and distraction, but rather the increased usage of SMS i.e. students are distracted by their social lives rather than the use of teen text. The “falling grades” could maybe, be attributed to students being unable to spell as a result of their frequent use of teen text, but even then I think there are other factors.