April 4 2001.

On online translation tools

"The sun being of return, you do not have any more an excuse to remain locked up."

You can get access to Web information written in a foreign language, provided you use one of the online translation programs. Pandia takes a look at what the search engines have to offer.

Google translation service

The Pandia Award Winner Google, does not rest after the party. It goes on adding new features to its arsenal of search engine tools. This alone makes us believe Google will remain a stayer in an otherwise uncertain search market.

The most prominent among the new features is the webpage translator. If your search has non-English results, there will be a link to a version of that page translated into English -- provided, of course, that it is written in a language supported by Google. The webpage is translated on the fly by Google's translation program.

If you want it to, you may also ask Google to translate the result descriptions for you. Do so by selecting the relevant alternative at the Preferences page.

Is the translation any good? Well, to put it this way: Your old French teacher would not be amused. The grammar is horrible, and the text is filled with peculiar phrases. Entertaining? Yes! Poetry? Definitely not!!

Text embedded in graphics is, of course, not translated.

Here's an example of a translation fetched from the French Pariscope.fr site:

The sun being of return, you do not have any more an excuse to remain locked up. Museums and galleries await you with many exposures. Certain castles as Are worth the Viscount open into large their gates to accommodate you. Great concerts in forecast and it is time to hold! Do not forget of it the theatre season which beats are full. And if you prefer to take the sun, Paris abounds in gardens flowered only for you!

However, you cannot expect much more than this, given today's technology. Google's translation is in no way any worse than the other alternatives on the market.

Obviously you cannot use a translation like this in marketing or in official documents, but it does give you an impression of what the site is about. That's much better than nothing.

If you cannot find a "translate this page" link in the results, go to the preference page and check the relevant language under "Search only these selected languages". You must accept cookies to use this feature.

The Babelfish translator

Now to the alternatives:

AltaVista has for a long time offered its own translation feature, called Babelfish, named after the well known freak of nature found in Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

It works in much the same way as Google's service. However, you may enter any text into a special form for translation, or ask it to translate the text of any given URL (Web address). Like Google, AltaVista will try to render the translated page with the same layout as the original.

Among the supported languages are Italian, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Portuguese.

Click here to translate this page with Babelfish!

Systran

The original version of Disney's Go portal used to have a separate section for webpage translation. That page is no longer there. The same service may, however, be accessed at the Systran home page.

Like at AltaVista, you may enter a URL or some text to be translated. No wonder, really, as Systran is the company that provides AltaVista with its technology.Systran's own online service is limited to European languages. This may be caused by the fact that Babelfish added Asian languages only recently.

Interface

We should add that many search engines are now offering national versions of their services. AltaVista has, for instance, a Norwegian version of it's search engine.

Google, on the other hand, has added language to its preference settings. Among the languages supported are Catalan, Bulgarian, Galician and Tagalog. We have grown especially fond of the bork, bork bork! alternative. Here's the Google advanced search page in the language spoken by the Swedish cook in the Muppets. They say Klingon is on its way.

Well, that's that for today. The sun being of return, we do not have any more an excuse to remain locked up.

Google Adds Languages, Phone Book And More (Search Engine Watch)
Google: Translate webpages automatically
Translate the Google interface into your own language (Google is looking for translators!)
Google Preferences
Systran
National versions of AltaVista
Roy's InterTran Translator (includes Slavic languages)

More search engine news...