TRAINING - LANGUAGE - 20.01.2010

Better translations thanks to Google

A helping hand

When you’re translating a text, Google Translate (http://translate.google.co.uk) can come in handy. You can copy the entire text or the URL of a webpage to the service, or you can upload a file. Google Translate can handle some 50 different languages, from Afrikaans to Yiddish. Needless to say, machine translations are far from perfect, but they can help you along.

Google Translator Toolkit

Recently a separate online service, Google Translator Toolkit (http://translate.google.com/toolkit/), was launched. It claims it not only makes use of machine translations, but also a huge database of man-made translations. The text we submitted for translation was done in exactly the same way as Google Translate. However, the online toolkit supports several extra target languages, including some very exotic ones. Moreover, you can edit the translations in a handy editor and invite others to make changes - Google learns from these adjustments. You can then download the final result, although we had to add the extension of the document (.doc) ourselves. Note. The Google Translator Toolkit only translates entire webpages or documents. In other words, it isn’t suitable for translating individual words, phrases or sentences, something which is possible in Google Translate.

Client for Google Translate

Another recent newcomer is the free Client for Google Translate (http://translateclient.com). It’s not a webtool but a piece of software running in the background. When you want to translate a piece of text on, say, a webpage, simply select it and click on the “G” which will appear as a pop-up. The text will be translated immediately without having to surf to Google Translate first. In the same way, you can have a word or sentence in a Word document or an e-mail translated. The first time you want to use this feature, you should right-click on the icon in the taskbar and choose Enable after selecting the text. Conveniently, Client for Google Translate automatically recognises the correct language. You can also set the preferred language to translate into.

Note. You may see a “W” beside the “G”. This enables you to access the Wikipedia definition of a term directly. However, this option is only available in the paid Pro version, which you can try out for 30 days free of charge. It also lets you install dictionaries so that you can use the tool without an Internet connection as well.

NiceTranslator

NiceTranslator (http://www.nicetranslator.com) also makes use of Google Translate. Here again, you can type your text or paste the text you’ve copied. Conveniently, this online service recognises the source language automatically and can translate into several languages simultaneously (via Add Translators). However, you can’t enter a URL or upload an entire document. So this service is most suited for short translations.

How about Yahoo! Babel Fish?

This would almost make us forget Yahoo!Babel Fish (http://babelfish.yahoo.com). Not that it would be a great loss: the number of language pairs is much more limited here, and we feel that the quality of the translations - which are machine translations as well - doesn’t match that of Google Translate.