Google makes available website translator gadget
October 1st, 2009 Leave a comment Visited 150 times, 1 so far today
Google makes available website translator gadget
To celebrate the International Translation Day, Google launched a new service for web publishers.
This new feature is called website translator gadget.
It uses the Google Translation back-end to provide instant translation of the web-page being visited by a user.
As a web publisher you can insert the gadget on your web-page. If a user visits that web-page with another language set in his web browser, that page is automatically displayed in that language!
The visitor get to see the ‘implementation’ on the web-page so he can switch back to the original language if he so desires.
Google said: “Automatic translation is convenient and helps people get a quick gist of the page. However, it’s not a perfect substitute for the art of professional translation. Today happens to be International Translation Day, and we’d like to take the opportunity to celebrate the contributions of translators all over the world.”
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October 2nd, 2009 at 11:04 am
Adding this semi-automatic translation is an interesting feature, but how does the translation actually read to a speaker of that language?
Presumably the translation is handled by the same engine as Google Translate. I recently blogged about this kind of machine translation at “Making Sense” (worldaccent.com/blog) and, more importantly, its dangers. It can be great for getting the gist of something, but is also often way off beam. Google state this quite openly, but it’s worth thinking over.
If a user runs your website through Google translate, they know its at their own risk. If you have “provided” a translation, aren’t you more responsible for what it says? As Bing Translator warns you every time you use it: “Automatic translation can help you understand the gist of the translated text but is no substitute for a professional human translator.”
And, unless you speak the target language, how do you know if your website is being rendered in perfect prose or as unintelligible gibberish? If you care about what “you” are saying in translation, you’re still best off sticking to a human translator.