1. 08 July 2005

    1281 days ago

    Google translate bookmarklet

    On my other computer I had a bookmarklet for translating the current selection with google's translate utility, but lost it. Here it is, so I always have it. Now you can too. Here it is in code:

    javascript:langpair="fr|en";e=""+(window.getSelection?window.getSelection():document.getselection?document.getSelection():document.selection.createRange().text);if(!e)e=prompt("enter%20text%20to%20translate","");if(e!=null)void(window.open("http://google.com/translate_t?langpair="+langpair+"&text="+escape(e),"translate","scrollbars=1,resizablel=1,width=500,height=500"))

    Just copy it to your bookmarks and change the langpair variable to suit your language needs. You can find the right values in the <select name=langpair> on the translate page.

    Kjell Olsen1281 days ago

  2. 22 May 2005

    1327 days ago

    Google Translator: The Universal Language

    I use google’s translator all the time, and it works well – at least for just translating individual phrases or words. But it looks like it’s on the edge of a breakthrough:

    To the translation system, any language is treated the same, and there is no manually created rule-set of grammar, metaphors and such. Instead, the system is learning from existing human translations. Google relies on a large corpus of texts which are available in multiple languages.

    All it needs is someone to feed the system the two books and to teach it the two are translations from language A to language B, and the translator can create what Franz Och called a “language model.”

    via Kjell Olsen1327 days ago

  3. Also somewhat recently

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