Firefox Translation Plug-In to Increase Global Dialogue
Yahoo announced its acquisition of Maktoob today in a deal meant to improve programming in areas like the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. Wrote VP of Emerging Markets Keith Nillson, "We're committed to responsible global engagement. This means being sensitive to local laws, customs, and norms." As critical thinkers, are we going to sit back in our English-only culture bubbles or do we also want a taste of that global engagement? If you're a Firefox user and you're interested in accessing foreign language sites, you may want to try the Worldwide Lexicon's new Universal Translator Toolbar.
The Worldwide Lexicon is an open-source project that exists to eliminate language barriers using a combination of human and machine translation techniques. ReadWriteWeb reviewed the company in an article on open translation projects. In its latest Universal Translator effort, the group helps translate entire web pages automatically within the browsing experience. The Firefox tool enables project members to create, curate and share translations.
In June, ReadWriteWeb covered the Google toolbar's translation feature in Internet Explorer. Worldwide Lexicon's browser-based toolbar seems to improve where the Google toolbar leaves off. One of the great features of the Worldwide Lexicon project is that you can correct translations or suggest that a translator improve upon a particular page.
A Russian friend once mentioned that he had a hard time getting entries accepted into Wikipedia because he had a hard time depoliticizing his words. Rather than removing cultural nuances from an article, the Universal Translator gives us a window into an authentic perspective often unlike our own. While no human or machine translation is perfect, this effort is a great step towards bridging truly global dialogue.
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Thanks for the share.
Excellent initiative.
Am sorry, but machine translation results are poor and spam search engines results. Even if a human person is editing the translation, the result is still worst, and the time it takes is more than to manually translate the whole document. I recommend using paid services like OneHourTranslation.com for such thing. Many website owners are not aware of the way their users see their website after reading a bad translation. It also effects the perceived quality of the products / brands that are marketed on those pages. Do not use machine translation for business related pages!
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/keithcook70#b8f75
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August 26, 2009 12:51 AM
Yes machine translaton is no substitute for professional human translators but the above comment about the time it takes to edit machine translation is incorrect. We offer our customers the option of Post Edited Machine Translation, and this process takes far less time than a normal translation.
Hopefully it will work great.
The above comments are why I really enjoy the rikai-chan addon for firefox. It gives you a word per word (sometimes phrase) translation as you mouse across them. Of course this requires you have a little more knowledge of any given language's syntax you're looking at, but I like to think that would give people a greater appreciation for language variance in general (then again, I'm a linguist).
Similar to the nifty IMTranslator in Firefox:
[ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2257 ]
though this can translate the entire page on the fly.
@https://me.yahoo.com/keithcook70#b8f75 re: your comment on spamming search results; you don't seem to have done your research. The WWL doesn't change search results, because the machine translations aren't stored on a public page. The machine translations are shown to the WWL users just in the same way that I can go to http://apertium.org, hit "Surf and translate" and it translates _any_ web page for me. Even your precious business page. It doesn't, however, change www.yourbusiness.com for people who _aren't_ using the WWL, so you can rest easy.
Whether post-editing takes more time than translating from scratch is simply a matter of how good that translational pair is. A good machine translation should have a Word Error Rate of less than 10%, Apertium's Spanish->Portuguese system had 8.3% back in 2006 (http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Publications#2006), this is quite suitable for post-editing. If the WER is eg. 30%, translating from scratch is probably better. Of course, there are other issues like difficult text domains and so on... but the point is, some times post-editing really is faster than translating from scratch, and if this means more people can use their native tongue, then it's definitely worth it.
Besides, the WWL does include the option to get a page professionally translated (last I saw there were links straight to Proz.com), translations which will become available for everyone. Which is quite wonderful.
Posted by: unhammer.wordpress.com
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August 27, 2009 11:43 PM
The tool may be nice, but the fact that google translation engine cannot properly generate human-readable text in other languages, i.e. Chinese, makes the tool less useful.
Machine translation is a hard topic in computer science, and I don’t think our technology is ready for it yet.
This is really a great idea I am surprised it's not in wider use already.
I think machine translation is doing a great job. I don't know about Chinese, but Portuguese - English translation are not perfect but understandable. Whenever I do a translation, they often save me from having to grab a dictionary, and it saves me time not having to retype some of the words. I can copy, paste, insert, delete faster than I can type the translation from scratch.
Whether post-editing takes more time than translating from scratch is simply a matter mantolama of how good that translational pair is. A good machine translation should have a Word Error Rate söve of less than 10%, Apertium's Spanish->Portuguese system had 8.3% back in 2006 (http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Publications#2006), this is quite suitable for post-editing. If the WER is eg. 30%, translating from scratch boyacıis probably better. Of course, there are other issues like difficult kartonpiyer text domains and so on... but the point is, some times post-editing really is faster than translating from scratch, and if this means more people can use their native tongue, then it's definitely worth it.
thanks so much 4 a nice topic. it's really a wonderful