Language is constantly evolving. Its vast quirks and colloquialisms are never-ending. Just think about sites like UrbanDictionary.com, which have been created specifically for slang terms, and can be updated by anybody. If you want to keep up with language - ever your native tongue - you have to put in some extra work.

And what about the poetics and nuances of language? In ReadWriteWeb Writer Marshall Kirkpatrick's post on the first launch of Google Conversation Translation for Android, he said:

"Google's much celebrated computational learning of what words often appear together, thanks to things like search queries and Google Docs, still struggles to come close to the awesome power of wet-ware, the human mind. Language translation is an art. Approaching it like science sounds like a recipe for poor communication."

The text version of Google Translate for Android is available in 63 languages.

Would you rather text or speak the language you want to translate? Tell us in the comments below.

If you've never read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, know three things - the guide is this really cool book that knows everything about the universe, everyone in that universe can communicate with each other, and you're really missing out on a great story. What's that have to do with anything?

Google today added even more languages to Google Translate for Android and it reminded us of how much closer we are getting to a reality where smartphones will break down language barriers in real-time as we wend our way through the world.

Today, the company that wants to index all the world's knowledge added three more languages - Japanese, Arabic and Korean - to the list of 15 languages that it now offers text-to-speech support for on Android phones. This means, you can directly input text in your language, choose the language to translate it to, and then have the phone say it for you. Of course, you could use it to help learn too, but that's not nearly as interesting as the ability to wander the world and let your phone do the talking. (Have you ever tried to ask "Where's the subway?" in Mandarin? I'm willing to bet that anyone, including my Android phone, could pronounce Mandarin words better than I can.)

We thought we would offer a brief smattering of everything Google has done in the past year in terms of rebuilding that Tower of Babel and helping us all communicate a little bit better.

• Google Rebuilds the Tower of Babel with Real-Time Language Translation
• Latest Version of Google Chrome Adds Auto-Translation
• Google Goggles Gets Translation
• Google Translate Now Speaks More Than 30 Languages
• Google Translate & Wikipedia: 16 Million Words Later
• New Google Chrome Extension Will Translate Your Tweets and Facebook Updates
• Google Docs Adds Translation for 53 Languages
• For All Your Dead Language Translation Needs: Google Translate Adds Latin
• Amazing Instant Translation App Looks Great in Video

What other advances has Google made in the last year in its effort to finally dissolve the language barrier? If we've left anything out, help us - and everyone else - recall in the comments below.

You can input a word or phrase for translation by typing the text or by talking into the phone. The new iPhone app accepts voice input from 15 languages, and just like the existing web app, lets you translate that phrase into one of more than 50 languages.

The linguaphiles here at ReadWriteWeb were resoundingly skeptical of the recent release of Android's translation app, contending that "Given the wide range of languages, accents and intonations in the world, we probably shouldn't expect this to be much more than a gimmick yet."

I'm not sure I'd call this a gimmick, but nor it is the answer to all your translation needs. It is, nonetheless, a pretty cool translation app and some of the new features make it more useful than just the ability to have foreign words read aloud. The app lets you enlarge the translated text to full-screen, for example, helpful for reading the text or for showing the translation to someone you're communicating with. There's the option to spell out the translation of non-Latin script languages (such as Chinese or Japanese) in Latin characters to read it phonetically. And there are also dictionary results for some words single words, and - a helpful feature to avoid international roaming charges - you can access your starred translations and translation history offline.

The service is just beginning and is reported to be very experimental. Franz Och, head of Google's translation services, said in February of 2010 that this new service should "work reasonably well in a few years' time." Given the wide range of languages, accents and intonations in the world, we probably shouldn't expect this to be much more than a gimmick yet.

...we can only imagine the difficulty of the task ahead, especially with languages such as Mandarin or Cantonese, which are tonally based. In Mandarin, for example, the word "ma" can have four different meanings according to the tone used. If the speaker uses the first tone, a constant high pitch, then the word means "mother". If they use the third tone, a dropping then rising pitch, however, the meaning changes to "horse".

Anyone who has used Google Translate in text form knows how awkward it can be. Do you know any Spanish speakers who can't speak better English than Google Translate likely could? If so, do you really want to pull out your expensive smart phone and start waggling it in their faces? I expect this software will be used by lazy students doing homework far more often than it will be in actual conversation. ReadWriteWeb writer Curt Hopkins, who translates poetry, says of Android Translate, "this sort of tool works best for people who've studied a language already and are using it as a dictionary or refresher."

Tower of Babel technology will always have a powerful draw; last month a new mobile augmented reality technology called Word Lens promised to translate written words on the fly and overlay the translation on our view of the world, for example. People were very excited about it all around the web. It made a great demo video, but the actual results when using the app are terrible.

Language, context, culture, class, technology - all of these present huge challenges. Google's much celebrated computational learning of what words often appear together, thanks to things like search queries and Google Docs, still struggles to come close to the awesome power of wet-ware, the human mind. Language translation is an art. Approaching it like science sounds like a recipe for poor communication.

In a blog post entitled "Veni, Vidi, Verba Verti", or "I came, I saw, I translated the words", Google announced it would begin offering "the first language translation system by which no native speakers now make use of: the Latin."

This Latin translation system rarely be used to translate e-mails or understand the subtitles of YouTube videos. But many that are ancient books of philosophy, of physics and of mathematics are written in Latin. But many thousands of books are in Google Books, who have whole passages in Latin. [...] The next time you find a Latin passage or you need help with the Latin writings, try this.

As Jakob Uszkoreit - the "Ingeniarius Programmandi" behind this morning's announcement - points out, many Latin books have already been translated and there aren't likely to be many new texts written in a dead language. Using these translations, Google has created the Alpha version of its Latin translation tool, which bored high school students will likely rejoice over.

Additionally, using Google Translate, Tweetmeme will now automatically translate tweets users wish to share in their native language. "This automatically detects if translation is required and prompts you when it has made the change, it is a simple one-click to revert the translation if that is not what you desire," said Tweetmeme in a blog post today.

It's encouraging to see language support reaching more third-party services as the international Twitter community grows. Personally I am still waiting for the popular desktop and mobile applications to begin automatically translating tweets from users I follow who tweet in multiple languages. This, of course, is challenging due to the shorthand slang that Twitter's character limit produces, but it would be an invaluable feature to users like myself who happen to follow people who often tweet in a language other than my own.

The feature uses the open-source speech synthesizer eSpeak to turn text into sound, giving Google Translate users the ability to hear how the words they're seeing are supposed to be pronounced.

Google first introduced its "text-to-speech" feature in November 2009, adding support for Hatian, Creole, French, Italian and German in recent months.

Today's announcement adds text-to-speech functionality for for Afrikaans, Albanian, Catalan, Chinese (Mandarin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Latvian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese and Welsh.

As we noted last week when looking at the addition of translation using text recognition to Google Goggles, Google has been busy lately with numerous advances in the realm of translation. The company has announced automated captioning for YouTube videos, auto-translation for websites in Chrome and software to provide real-time voice translation over mobile phones.

The Times spoke with Franz Och, head of Google's translation services, who said that this new service should be up and running and would "work reasonably well in a few years' time."

"Everyone has a different voice, accent and pitch," said Och. "But recognition should be effective with mobile phones because by nature they are personal to you."

Och is referring to the fact that the software would have the opportunity to learn your accent, dialect and general manner of speaking over time, becoming more accurate. But we can only imagine the difficulty of the task ahead, especially with languages such as Mandarin or Cantonese, which are tonally based. In Mandarin, for example, the word "ma" can have four different meanings according to the tone used. If the speaker uses the first tone, a constant high pitch, then the word means "mother". If they use the third tone, a dropping then rising pitch, however, the meaning changes to "horse".

The fun doesn't stop there, the Times article points out, as handling the vast number of accents and dialects is also an immense task. Much like the Web-based translation that Google does, though, the system would become more accurate over time, essentially learning from its experience.

We hope that one of the first things it learns is not to call our new Chinese friend's mother a horse.

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.

Read RWW in Spanish, Chinese, Etc.

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.

Other Translation Tools

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!

If YouTube users want to see the high-end of the fun spectrum in video annotation, they should check out Nico Nico Douga.

Unfortunately, you can't use the site without registering and registering is hard if you don't know Japanese. Thanks to Google Translate we were able to register and this is what we saw.

How Nico Nico Douga Works

After a mandatory account registration, Nico Nico Douga users can watch any of countless videos on the site and participate in conversations literally on top of them. A simple chat bar lets you shoot a message out onto the video at the moment you press post. The text zips across the video player and is gone, but is surrounded by messages that other users have sent at the same point in time.

The chat on top of the video is asynchronous, but a sidebar also displays the most absolutely new messages no matter where they are in the video. The end result is a fast paced conversation, sometimes with people watching a video at the same time as you but always in such a manner that it feels that way.

Nico Nico Douga makes about $1 million each month from premium subscriptions costing 500 Yen (about $5 USD). Premium subscribers pay to have their messages stay on the video after others expire and to be able to post in more colors, sizes and fonts.

You can't embed Nico Nico Douga videos offsite, but here's a screencap of one below.

Simulated Real Time

We've written here lately about the growing importance of real time communication and access to information online. The chorus of people calling on FriendFeed to add XMPP functionality for immediate updates is getting louder, as well.

We would argue though, that for any vendor online there is a real opportunity in simulated real time. In the case of Nico Nico Douga, the conversations feel like they are real time because of the way the user experience is architected. In fact, in some ways they are better than real time because only so many people are watching the same video at any given time.

Compare this to the way that Viddler from the US lets people add comments to videos. That's not nearly as exciting because they are not an integral part of the user experience. They are not intrusive either, but Nico comments can be turned off with a click.

Kyte used to put chat over the top of videos (it appears they don't any more) but those conversations weren't tied to particular moments in a video.

The Future of YouTube Annotation?

Perhaps the point is that Nico Nico Douga plays with temporal elements in a particularly appealing way. It may not always be real-time, but perhaps that's not literally what we as users want in all cases.

Will YouTube Annotations allow for temporal play? At least on the part of the video publisher they seem to do so. The next logical step would be to allow viewers to join in the fun as well. Nico Nico Douga isn't standing still either though, most recently launching a feature that lets users create their own cartoon newscasts with sophisticated editing and annotation.

If the future of sites like Nico Nico Douga is of interest to you, check out what Mr. Ryou Shimizu, developer of the site, is doing now with his new company Ubiquitous Entertainment Inc. (Google translation into English).

Trackur Trends

Unlike a larger service like Google Trends, for example, which only displays trends that are massive enough to cause a spike in overall search volume, Trackur Trends can regularly search for any keywords or phrase you choose, no matter how small or how rare it is that they are mentioned. You can also add filters to your search to help narrow down your results even further.

However, this new addition does not affect the price for the Trackur service - in fact, the price has now been lowered. The new pricing model actually makes it more affordable for everyone, but becomes especially appealing to the SMB market. Before, at $88/month, we wondered if Trackur did enough to make the service worth it, but today, Trackur's Standard service is available for only $18/month, so the answer to that earlier question is now "YES." (Note: the Enterprise version of the service changed to $188-197/month.)

If you're interested in using Trackur for your trend tracking needs, ReadWriteWeb has 5 free, 6-month Standard subscriptions to give away - just comment below with your information.

According to Blender, the project had four main goals: create new tools for editing and rendering hair, fur or grass in Blender, improve on character animation tools to make them more suitable to "cartoonish" motion, put the software through its paces for rendering large outdoor environments, and "further validate Blender as a professional animation creation suite." Secondary to those main goals, the open movie project provides everyone in the Blender community with professional-level source files to modify, remix, and learn from.

As for the movie itself, don't expect Pixar-level stuff in terms of story, but the animation is quite good. If Big Buck Bunny is indicative of what the software is capable of, Blender definitely proves its point about being a able, pro-level animation 3D rendering tool.

Big Buck Bunny can be downloaded for free in a wide variety of formats from the official page, as well as via BitTorrent. It is also up on Vimeo and YouTube and is nearing 150,000 views across both sites. Source files can be downloaded here.

The Blender Foundation isn't sitting still. They started work on the Apricot project in February, this time attempting to show off Blender's ability in the game development field by creating an open 3D game. The game will work on "at least Linux, Windows, OS X" and utilize the open source Crystal Space 3D engine and the Python scripting language. The Apricot project will kick off production in July in Amsterdam.

Last November, we expressed skepticism about the kiosk plan. "The major advantage [Blockbuster] had over Netflix was the ability to offer free in-store rentals if people returned mailed videos to the store," we wrote. An in-store kiosk cuts the convenience level in half -- now that you're not getting anything mailed to you, you're forced to make a trip to the store, and there is no longer any reason for Blockbuster to offer free rentals.

Much of Blockbuster's good news was at the store level where mechandising revenue rose 19.7% over last year. But as the Motley Fool points out, in-store kiosks might hurt that revenue stream. "I thought the purpose of winning foot traffic at the store level was to grow incremental impulse-item sales," writes Rick Aristotle Munarriz. "Folks walking in to use an automated kiosk are unlikely to bother with conventional checkout lines."

What About Redbox?

While it's true that Redbox DVD rental kiosks already have 6800 locations in the US -- more than Blockbuster -- and that the company is moving toward an IPO, Blockbuster's kiosks aren't the same. Redbox works because the kiosks are placed in locations that already have a lot of retail foot traffic -- such as Wal-Mart, Walgreens, and grocery stores. Redbox inspires impulsive movie rentals and is convenient for people already out doing other errands.

Blockbuster kiosks, on the other hand, would be in places you only visit if you're planning to rent a movie already. The convenience of no late fees is also diminished when you have to leave the house and download your movie to a portable device -- which may mean less than perfect video quality when you hook your device up to a television.

The Future is in Downloads

Last fall Keyes told reporters that he expects the DVD business to be a significant part of Blockbuster's business for at least 5 years, and that the kiosks are meant as a way to transition users toward a future of digital downloads. Netflix agrees that in 5 years the DVD business will be on the decline, but Netflix is skipping the "transitional" period and moving straight to downloading movies directly to the TV.

Blockbuster is also working on a set-top box, which will put its acquisition of movie download service Movielink to use. Unfortunately for Blockbuster, they'll be a late entry to a market that is already crowded with mammoth competitors, including Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Microsoft.

Despite some good revenue news, Blockbuster still seems like a company that's making all the wrong moves as it struggles to transition to the digital world.

Perhaps the Onion says it best though, in the following news report.

Eurekster provides a service called a Swicki, a search function that lets site owners identify what other sites in their community they would like to have included in their Swicki search results. We've used Swicki here at ReadWriteWeb in the past (disclosure: it was a paid sponsorship arrangement, as it was also on some other top tech blogs). For its user base, the company offered revenue sharing from search ads. Many users had built up a nice revenue stream from the service. In the comments to our previous post, there was some interesting feedback from some of those users.

RWW commenter TomYam, who appeared to be a loyal Swicki user, theorized that Google was to blame for Eurekster's sudden drop in fortune:

"...one of the big reasons why they have dropped is probably because Google made an change in their search algo and what to keep in their index at the end of Nov 2007. And basically all swicki "subdomains" dropped out of Google index. From 2 million indexed swickis to currently 300.000."

TomYam went on to outline how he was making money from swickis (and note we have no way to verify if this is true, but it does show the potential that swickis have as custom search engines with a revenue stream):

"Trust me I know this since I monitored my swickis on daily base and was trying to build up a nice portfolio of swickis on "many" different topics that I came up with while watching TV and reading magazines.

I started creating swickis in September 2006, and basically continued doing them until January 2008.

During 2007 i managed to climb from a few cents per day from Adsense to a couple of days in December when I finally broke 100$/ day barrier.

And then first week in December 2007, they they made the decision to drop adsense revenue for any swicki that was not in their index.

And guess what I only had 3 in there. Never occurred to me to ask them to add my swiciks as the first ones popped up there automatically.

So my +2000 swickis suddenly dropped from a nice +100$/day to not even 1$/day...... and they were really showing a nice pace towards even 200$/day.

1 swicki maybe gave only 0,03$, a few gave 1$ per day, but you add upp +100 swickis that have 10-30 visitors a day then is suddenly picks up.

I made 4300$ from adsense revenue from my swickis during 2007, and was already looking for a prosperous 2008.

Talk about wasted time from my side, to promote and submit my swickis and giving "eurekster" linkpower over the +1 year that I was doing daily management of my swickis and creating new ones.

So for now I have not touched or tried to promote them over 6 months. It's going to be interesting to see what happens.

If they would allow the Adsense or other revenue back on for any created swicki, then I might be interested to promote them again as it would be worthwhile.

Go to http:// shoutouts .swicki .com - and you will see that they are "working on it...

2006 and 2007 I thought this was a nice way to make some extra $$$ in the years to come. Now....... Nope.

Luckly I have other income sources and no debts....

But that is life.. It sucks.

Now is time to concentrate on new ventures... Time for Poker News in Asia."

Another commenter, Kim Remmington, also thought Google was to blame:

"Looking at the chart above its obvious that Google thought that most of the swickis were spam. Eurekster basically said this in their blog. A lot of those spammy swickis were bringing in decent money. When you combine that with the incredible ease of making swickis, swicki farms and swicki universes, Google had something to worry about."

I personally don't believe that swickis are spam, although it does sound like they attracted many 'get rich quick' types. I actually found the swickis I used to be very useful, highly targeted search engines. The RWW swicki for example was a great way to find focused news on web tech, not just from RWW but from other sources that I chose to include (e.g. other tech blogs).

In any case, it's good to see that Eurekster is back. And we'll see if we can get to the bottom of the story for you!

The debate's theme is 'the future of the Web'. To submit a question or vote on them, you first need to create an account. It only requires a username and an email address, so nothing too onerous. We encourage RWW readers to vote on questions, it takes just a few minutes and will really help create an interesting debate (which RWW will be covering).

Top Questions

A representative from Rensselaer told us that "right now we have about 25 questions running the gamut from internet privacy to how the web can solve the global hunger crisis." He mentioned that "there are some really good questions that go beyond the obvious - for example, a question about crossing language barriers as Internet access expands in the developing world."

The most popular topic "by far" is the semantic web, but the equal most popular question overall is about net neutrality.

Here are the top questions over the last 30 days, at time of writing:

• Semantic Web a dream?
• Is net neutrality essential for democracy?
• Can you imagine the future of the world (wide Web) without the Semantic Web? What would such a world (wide Web) look like?
• Muttilingual Internet--Fracturing or Blossoming?
• What controls should be in place on the Web, if any?
• How do we make sense of the proliferation of data from the ever growing number of User's social activity feeds?
• Can the web help us solve the world hunger problem?
• How can we make ourselves less vulnerable to "web failure"?

To submit a question and/or vote on them, create an account here.