Mloovi is a new app that runs any RSS feed through Google Translate. This may not be perfect, but there's is a clear need for such a service so we're pretty excited about it.
Created by the makers of language learning service LearnLists, Mloovi is free with ads and offers premium accounts. The company credits TechCrunch UK's Mike Butcher with the inspiration, and Butcher's blog is where we discovered the service.
Let's be up front about limitations of the service: it strips images and formatting, the translations don't read super well, there's no analytics ala Feedburner, etc.
All of that said, we can now see with relative ease what's on the front page of Spanish Digg-type site Méname, so we're happy! When we find something that looks interesting, we'll read the translation, then perhaps try to find English language coverage of the same subject or just be happy to have some information even if it's a little Google-funky.
Want to read (or scan) ReadWriteWeb in Spanish?
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Readwriteweb-inglsToEspaol
How about in Chinese?
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Readwriteweb-ChineseTranslation
We ran the Mloovi-created feeds through FeedBurner so that we could get some idea how much interest there is in reading our content in the languages above.
Are these translations of sufficient quality to be of interest to readers? Let us know what you think in the poll above. RSS readers can click here to visit this post and participate in the poll or see results.
We love our international readers and anyone who takes the time to read RWW in a language other than their native one. As such we try to pay particular attention to tools that facilitate text translation. If these tools are of interest to you too, see also our coverage of Lingro - the on the fly Creative Commons translation dictionary - and DotSub, the collaborative video translation service that results in projects like the one below. Three cheers for the global change made possible by new tools on the web!
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4613
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
Hi Marshall,
Thanks for your great write up, we have only been live for a few hours so it is great to see people picking up on it already, and giving nice comments :)
At the moment the translations are stripped of their HTML as this was causing problems with the display. I am working on a fix so expect to see formatted translations soon.
I will be interested to hear comments about the quality of translations, but of course we have no control over these, gonna have to speak to Google about that.
Cheers
Mike
http://mloovi.com
Posted by: Mike Robinson | August 6, 2008 10:51 AM
Yes, there is Internet also in other languages than English ;-)
Posted by: Jan Horna
|
August 6, 2008 11:33 AM
Interesting and useful post but you have a dud link, proving bad things happen to good people ... I always say a flaw proves I am human!
It was here:
RSS readers can click HERE to visit this post and participate in the poll or see results.
Posted by: Julie Power | August 6, 2008 11:34 AM
Not bad not bad, i like the idea and its very nice. I wish my blog could be automatically translated in other languages I only speak 6 :( and write 5 so thats a lot of work to translate stuff my self.
Posted by: LiveCrunch | August 6, 2008 11:35 AM
I also wonder, what happens if people subscribe? ...Does my feed counter go up ?
Posted by: LiveCrunch | August 6, 2008 11:39 AM
Thank you,
I am glad that there is a feed translator like this
As for myself, i am writing a blog in two languages (i write in both English and Chinese in some posts), i find this a good idea becoz it will save me time
unfortunately i just tried the Chinese version of the translator and its very inaccurate
it is probably becoz chinese is quite difficult to translate like this tho
Maybe it works well with other languages so i will still give it a goal =)
thanks
Posted by: ATHENA | August 6, 2008 12:03 PM
Awesome! I've been looking for something like this.
Posted by: Sarah Perez
|
August 6, 2008 12:39 PM
I *really* like this !!
Posted by: Peter Garner
|
August 6, 2008 2:25 PM
I like Mloovi, although I noticed it inserts ads as *actual posts* into our feed. As publisher I'm not too happy about that, because it makes it seem like the ad is actually a part of our content. See screenshot here to see what I mean:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/Mloovi_ads.png
Posted by: Richard
|
August 6, 2008 3:16 PM
This is a great tool, but it may be abused by spammers. Imagine if spammers setup splogs with translated feeds then it is almost impossible to detect them, because we don't understand the translated language and it is stripping links and images from the feed. Not to criticize Mloovi but a thought.
Posted by: Ram | August 6, 2008 3:26 PM
Hmm, I'd like visitors to click to a landing page where they get to choose from all the translated feeds I offer.
I could make that page myself as a blog post I suppose.
Whatever happened to NativeText
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/02/nativetext_prom.html
Posted by: John Tropea | August 6, 2008 11:19 PM
Hi,
I've built a online translation service based on google translator,open calais and thesaurus services which is called http://tradd.us.
RWW was the first blog that i've sent some kind of press release about it, but RWW doesn't even had the time to answer my email....
Anyway, congratulations to the Mloovi guys, this seems to be a really nice service.
Posted by: Eduardo Sasso | August 7, 2008 5:11 AM
Sorry for the typo, the address is http://tradd.us
Posted by: Eduardo Sasso | August 7, 2008 5:13 AM
hi!
Is there an English-to-Tagalog translation in mloovi? If they dont have a translator i can be good for work. Thank you.
Charles
Money Making and Blogging Tips
http://www.resourcesandmoney.blogspot.com
Posted by: charles | August 7, 2008 6:01 AM
Hi,
Sorry Charles, we don't have Tagalog, we are limited by what Google provide us with unfortunately :(
Oh, and we have just upgraded so that formatted html & images will now show in the feeds.
I'm not sure people have realised yet the awesome power of Mloovi as an SEO tool, we are starting to get sites appearing in non-English search engines, and we have only been going for 36 hours!
Cheers
Mike
Posted by: Mike Robinson | August 8, 2008 12:48 AM
Hello Mike,
This is a great tool you make available to the micro-publishing community. I tried to use it but it did not work, I tried multiple sites feed, from my own site to the World Bank blog,The Fader Blog etc.. but Kept getting the following message
"Cela ne semble pas être une URL RSS, s’il vous plaît vérifier et essayer à nouveau."
The same feed is picked up by Google Reader or Browser Flock reader
What are the appropriate steps to follow in order to have one's RSS feed translated ?
Thank you
Posted by: Frederic Tape | August 8, 2008 5:47 AM
Hi Frederic,
I just added The Fader blog and it worked ok (apart from some HTML formatting issues which I will work on now):
HTML: http://mloovi.com/h/7b5ae1d20133adebb54a119f42feec77
RSS: http://mloovi.com/r/7b5ae1d20133adebb54a119f42feec77
Which URL were you using to add the feed? It needs to the actual RSS feed url rather than the blog URL (although I am working on some functionality which will scan a page and find the RSS feed if it is on there)
Try your other feeds again and let me know if you still have problems.
Cheers
Mike
http://mloovi.com
Posted by: Mike Robinson | August 8, 2008 8:19 AM
nice day naz ^^ ....................
Posted by: vanstyle | August 9, 2008 3:20 AM
thank you..
http://www.aylak.com
Posted by: Oyun | August 23, 2008 8:45 AM