Computer and Library Learning (Archived)

Free Translation Tools on the Internet

When someone needs to have something translated from one language into another language, one cannot do better than use a professional human translator. However, not everyone is able to avail themselves of such a service. Still, someone may need to get a quick translation done on some text at low or no cost through online machine translation (MT) tools on the internet, provided that one can accept that the quality of the translation will be generally lower than that provided by a professional translator. Another limiting factor may be the number of languages covered by a particular MT tool.

Nonetheless, there are free online translation tools that people can'try, including Google Language Tools and Yahoo Babel Fish. Google Language Tools offers several options, namely: a translated search of a phrase from one language to another; translating text from one language to another; translating a web page from one language to another; offering the Google interface in a variety of languages from Afrikaans to Zulu; and, making the Google web site available through various domains around the world from Andorra to Zimbabwe. Yahoo Babel Fish allows the translation of a block of text up to 150 words and the translation of a web page from one language to another. Yahoo Babel Fish also offers some translation tips including the use of correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation for the best possible translations, the use of some translated text as a search strategy, and the ability to compare the translated web page with its counterpart in the original language.

Imtranslator provides real-time translation for over 50 languages. One can create a free account and get access to the online translator, TTS Voice (with animated speaking voices for a limited number of languages), a spell checker for several Indo-European languages, a multilingual dictionary (providing word translations for the major European languages), a decoder to identify encoding for Russian text (with the option of transliteration in Latin characters), and a virtual keyboard supporting text input for 31 different languages.

When using free online translation tools, one should become with the Terms of Service and statements relating to copyright and limitation of liability.

One can find recent research articles about the potential efficacy of machine translation, including the following:

Garcia, Ignacio (2010), “Can Machine Translation Help the Language Learner?”  International Conference “ICT for Language Learning” 3^rd edition (PIXEL). Retrieved January 20, 2011 from: <http://www.pixel-online.net/ICT4LL2010/common/download/Proceedings_pdf/TRAD02-Garcia.pdf&gt;

Hampshire, Stephen and Carmen Porta Salvia, “Translation and the Internet: Evaluating the Quality of Free Online Machine Translators” Quaderns Revista de traducció 17, 2010: 197-209.  Retrieved January 20, 2011 from: <http://www.raco.cat/index.php/QuadernsTraduccio/article/view/194256/260430&gt;

A future blog post will examine other free online translation tools.