Google Translate has just introduced several new languages to their translation service. Adding to their already impressive list which has included difficult languages like Arabic and Chinese for quite some time, they now add to the list the following languages:
- Bulgarian
- Croatian
- Czech
- Danish
- Finnish
- Hindi
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Swedish
Of course we know that the translations any automated service offers aren’t perfect, and in fact, sometimes they’re way “off.” What they do help with though, is getting the general idea of what is being said. We’ve been able to use Google Translate on several occasions to be able to read websites in other languages. Without a translation service, this would not be possible. Another problem with translation services is that a lot of words change depending on the context that they are used, in every language, and at this point translation services aren’t so good at determining context. Google’s service is impressive, just because there are so many languages that they offer, and in all there are 506 different translation combinations.
Google Blogoscoped also points out how the design has been changed a little. They say, “Instead of a single HTML combo box showing the available language pairs, you now get two DHTML combo boxes each containing a language for more free mixing of source and target languages.” In other words, now you pick your starting language and your ending language in separate boxes. There’s also a “detect language” option for when you’re wanting to translate a web page. For example, I decided that I wanted to translate CyberNet News, so I entered in the URL and told Google to detect the language of the page, and then translate it to Finnish. Google detected that it was English, and then had no problem translating it to Finnish.
Source: Google Operating System
I work in multiple languages for my job and find Google Translate very useful indeed to identify key words. These extra languages are great.
“Of course we know that the translations any automated service offers aren’t perfect, and in fact, sometimes they’re way “off.””
I once had to translate a website and used Google. When I was on the site, I had the option of clicking the English text (which was translated from the original language) and I could edit it if it wasn’t the correct translation. A little pop-up balloon thing came up (like on Google Maps) and I was able to submit the revision for approval by Google. So that’s definitely something that’s very helpful.
I noticed that today when I was playing around with it and it’s definitely a nice feature. It’s also a good way for Google to put users to work for them (a way for Google to improve the service without needing to pay employees to do it) — which is smart.
Those translations are actually pretty good, especially compared to some other machine translations I’ve seen earlier. Some sentences are quite funny but there aren’t any huge mistakes and you get the right idea what the article is about.
It feels pretty weird though to read CyberNet articles in Finnish, with the whole page layout changed.
As I’m finnish I can tell you that this translate really sucks! I translated cybernetnews and the text goes like this:
Cybernetnews:
A couple of weeks ago I got an email forwarded to me and it was a list of rules that Bill Gates gave in a speech at a High School.
Google translated in finnish:
Pari viikkoa sitten sain sähköpostiviestin välitti minulle ja se oli listan sääntöjä, että Bill Gates piti puheen, joka lukio.
That translation really in english:
A couple of weeks ago I got an email message and it was list’s rules, that Bill Gates gave a speech, that High School.
Bottom line is that finnish is so much richer language than english that it is impossible to make translations automatically that can be undestod correctly.
I know that there are always many mistakes but translations between any other languages I have tested are not even near that horrible
When we used to offer a translation service for CyberNet (using Google), we always got complaints that the translations were terrible which is why we stopped offering them.
For exact translations, you really need someone who speaks the language to manually do it. To get a general idea of what is being said, Google and other translation services work great.
Lets face it Google is really rubbish, have you tried translating Russian? Its outrageous, totally undecypherable and many other languages Google claims to translate. They really need to overhaul the Translation section BIG TIME! Its pathetic