December 17, 2010

Google Translate Shows Alternate Translations

No translation is perfect, and that's especially true for a machine translation service like Google Translate. From now on, when you translate a text using Google Translate and Google finds some reliable alternate translations, you can pick one of them.

"Just click the translated phrase and you'll see a pop-up menu of possible alternates for that phrase, as well as the original phrase highlighted in your original text. Not only can these alternative translations give you a better understanding of a confusing translation, but they also allow you to help Google choose the best alternative when we make a mistake," explains Google.

It's interesting to notice that the new feature helps you better understand the technology behind Google Translate. "Typically, when we produce a translation, our system searches through millions of possible translations, selecting the best -- that is, the most statistically likely -- translation. With this feature, we expose more of those possible alternatives."


Right now, Google only shows alternate translations when you try to translate a text, so this doesn't work for web pages.

17 comments:

  1. It still needs a way to correct an entire phrase, as I've been getting words which I can translate individually but they're in the wrong order.

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  2. @Anon. Ah yes, the old syntactical problem. Duele rico.

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  3. But how to know the best translation? I mean the closest and the most correct one?

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  4. i turned off the alternate translation and now i can't turn it back on can someone help me please?

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  5. You can't turn off alternate translations. Just click on one of the words from the translation and you should some other options.

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  6. Am I wrong, or alternate translations is no longer available when google translating?

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  7. SOLUTION: alternate translations doesn't work for web pages, but doesn't work when You copy/paste multiple text blocks from web page either... copy/paste just one block of the text at the time...

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    1. please can you help in this subject as am getting wrong web page translation when am using google tool bar, is there any alternative for proper automatic translation of web pages.

      thanks in advance

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  8. I agree with "Anonymous" above. Those of us who actually can translate need a way to correct a whole sentence, as most Turkish to English translations still come out as a mess. For example, it translated a sentence as follows: "Canada's all our members who live in a society" when it should be "Our members who live in all regions of Canada." In other words, it put the modifier with the wrong noun ("all" goes with "regions", not with "members"). How can we correct that?

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  9. thanks kegnatz

    Really f***ing annoying, now alternate translations disappears in blocks of text. You need to type in individual terms in a new Google Translate window to avoid "contributing a better translation"

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  10. It shows me the alternatives, but will not allow me to chose one. What happened?

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  11. "It shows me the alternatives, but will not
    allow me to chose one. What happened?"

    same here. anyone know why?

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  12. the alternative translations are too annoying.they always come in when your in the middle of something.its soooooooooooo annoying.ireally need them off or i quite google soon because icant take it anymore!!!

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    1. Agree, its the most annoying thing I have ever had on my PC, GOOGLE are you listening it needs to be able to be turned off.

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  13. its really helpful... alternate translations to a better words was great.... but why it doesn't work on a huge numbers of words??? can anyone give me solution to turn on this on a big file words??

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  14. http://www.translatorbox.com/google-text-translator-alternative-for-wordpress/

    This plugin is much better than Google APis

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  15. I dislike alternate translation intensely but some people seem to find it useful. Could Google make it optional rather than obligatory? PLEASE!

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