Web Translation Tools

Have you ever been in a situation in which your search engine returns results in language that you do not understand? If your answer is 'Yes', web translation tools might be a good solution. Translation tool is not a new service in search engine industry. It has been existed for quite a few years. More and more search engines have integrated web translation tool in their services. Goggle - Translate, Yahoo - Babel Fish, and Windows Live -Translator are best examples. From the comparisons I have made between these three translation tools, Google provides the most complete translation services. Thus, through out the post I will use Google Translate as the example to discuss.

Google provides a link (as indicated by the red arrow in the image shown above) to translate the search results when the search results are not in the default language. When users click the translate link, the page is redirected to a translated page. The translated page looks pretty much the same with the original page; except, it is now in the language that you can understand. Google translation tool is not only integrated on the search result. More complete translation services can be access from Google Translate homepage. In the homepage, Google - Translate provides four services, which are Text and Web, Translated Search, Dictionary, and Tools.

• Text and Web - Translate foreign language text typed in the text box, or a web page by providing the link to the page.
• Translated Search - Using your own language you can search web pages which is written in foreign languages.
  
• Dictionary - Translate word.
  
• Tools - Provide JavaScript code that you can add to your own web page(s), so that your visitors can translate you web page(s) to foreign languages.

In addition those mention above, Google has also added translations tools in Google Talk and Gmail. The following pictures shows a chat bot which you can add to your contact list. It works just like a chat partner that replies what you have typed in foreign language.

Google translate currently support 15 language pairs which includes these languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese.

In term of quality, all of the web translation tools mentioned above are still unable to deliver accurate translations. It often translates words out of context and does not apply any grammatical rules. However, it is still sufficient to help users to understand the general content of a foreign language text. According to Google, "Automatic translation is very difficult, as the meaning of words depends on the context in which they're used. While Google is working on the problem, it may need some time before anyone can offer a quick and seamless translation experience. However, in the interim, Google hopes users find the service useful for most purposes."

In my view, when translation tools has reached certain quality, in which they can delivers a good quality of translation, Internet will be a universal medium of communication. You can communicate and distribute information to anyone on the Internet. Language will no longer be a barrier for information sharing. For business, this can be an enormous target market.

References:

• http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/faq_translation.html
  
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Translate
• http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/faq_translation.html
• http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/10/google-translate-switches-to-googles.html
• http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/search-without-boundaries.html
• http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-12-19-n41.html
• http://www.androidtech.com/html/google_translate.php