June 9, 2009

Google Translator Toolkit

Google Translator Toolkit is a new service that lets you translate documents by editing the translations automatically generated by Google. "Google Translator Toolkit allows human translators to work faster and more accurately, aided by technologies like Google Translate."

You can translate documents stored on your computer, web pages, Wikipedia articles and Knol articles. After importing a document, Google generates the translation, displaying it next to the original text. You can select a sentence from the original document and Google lets you edit the translation.


Google Translator Toolkit includes the collaborative features from Google Docs: you can invite other people to edit or view your translations, but the application doesn't display the collaborators that are currently editing a document.


An interesting feature is the "translation memory", a database of already-existing translations. "As you translate new sentences, we automatically search all available translation memories for previous translations similar to your new sentence. If such sentences exist, we rank and then show them to you. Comparing your translation to previous human translations improves consistency and saves you time: you can reuse previous translations or adjust them to create new, more contextually appropriate translations."

Google's service will make it easier to translate documents online, but it's also a great way to improve the quality of the machine translation service.

{ via Blogoscoped Forum }

51 comments:

  1. Using this translation tool we can save lot of time by using the latest feature "translation memory".

    Thanks
    Sankar

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  2. Why wasn't this just built right into Google Docs? I don't like when Google doesn't leverage existing products...

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  3. I'd prefer to see the translations improved dramatically before rolling more tools out to the public. I would have to imagine the English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English translations are the most popular here in the U.S., and even those translations are terrible most of the time.

    I commend Google for offering the service. It needs a lot of improvement, though.

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  4. as usual with Google tools the key think is that by using this tool we give away our translations to Google - do we want that?

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  5. @Anonymous - By giving your translations away, you also get to use everyone else's translations. Seems like a fair trade to me.

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  6. Alex,
    The toolkit insists on English as the source language (there is no other choice). Have you encountered this problem? How can I translate, for example, from French into English?

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  7. I have the same issue. No matter what source language I point it at it only gives me English as the Translate From: langauge.

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  8. The "translate for Wikipedia" feature is very nice. This tool is very good for freelance translators such as myself (I get my translation requests from OneHourTranslation.com) and will use the tool for sure. Keep in mind all those translation memories tools are still not replacement for the human mind!

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  9. In order to obtain really good (comparable to human expert) translations of entire documents, you have to give up the notion that each sentence in the source language translates to exactly one sentence in the target language. Language is not that simple. Perhaps you can split a target sentence into two or delete a target sentence, but for serious translation I guess it would be desirable to be able to edit larger fragments beyond a single sentence.

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  10. I'd like to translate to English as well, not from.

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  11. It would be great one could import his own TM files and export those generated by Google translator toolkit.

    GMail is growing each day so there should be no problem with storaging of the files.

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  12. This service is a total and indecent RIP-OFF! The Google guys will use cost-free translation memories and glossaries to perfect a product that will bring direct or indirect income to them. I, as a professional translator, am truly appalled.

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    Replies
    1. Upset at complainersJune 8, 2012 at 11:08 AM

      If you are so appalled why do you not show at least a nickname, I don´t think anybody will cut into your profits if you are any good. Grow up an welcome to 2012.

      Delete
  13. I think that English to Turkish and Turkish to English translation feature should be improved.

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  14. I am very disappointed by near zero progress in development of this tool. It seems that project was friezed about year ago in relatively poor state and now resuscitated. Tool interface seems to be not yet very comfortable. Also Idea to propagate in public "crippled" version with only english as source language is very bad! Potential of this type of tool seems to be very big, so I absolutely dont understand whay it is scamped this way....

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  15. Hello, and sorry about my English.

    I think a god aid to on-line translate is the UNL (Universal Networking Language). More info.

    I think this is a good project, but there is stopped or slower advance. If google take it for google translator, an advance on on-line translations can arrive soon.

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  16. Other interesting on the same topic

    http://mymemory.translated.net

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  17. I think google should ad Latin to the translater.

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  18. I have vendors in Germany, Philippines, India and other countries who get me to proof their translations.

    Would really like this if it could use other source languages than English

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  19. Google Translator is an amazing tool...It allows you to translate a text from english to any language you can think of and vice versa...

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  20. Google is providing this service for free, we should not forget that,
    if it was paid i can understand people complaining, but free service is free service, its your choice to use it.
    I thing the translation software is still in beta version.
    Lets give them time, and feedback so that google can improve the web world.
    Regards
    http://www.webworldguru.com

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  21. The same service already exists for almost 2 years on the web. Traduwiki.org is a translation tool designed for group and organization purposes. Functionalities are the same. Google isn't innovating on this one.

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  22. Many documents translated by professional translators must remain confidential. The language may be neutral but the information contained is never. Translators using Google translation toolkit need to know that anything translated using this service can be accessed and known by anybody. Besides, we will all be working for Google free. Again, there is no free lunch!

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  23. Be careful with your settings. I wanted to translate from French into English. It asked my location so I said I was in the US and it restricted my translations from English into any language. I cannot reverse this so I have to create a new Google Account so I can translate from French into any language. Crazy.

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  24. I am also very disappointed by near zero progress in development of this tool.

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  25. Hello,
    I am thinking of adding the google translate tool to my website, just wondering if there may be any "side effects"?

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  26. This "translator toolkit" would make a much better work with Esperanto available in field "from", because Esperanto is inherently more precise than English. I like the overall idea that translators help eachother, but not the choice of English as the pivot language.

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  27. EduCaramba says in english,
    Guys, I just read that many of you where a bit frustrated with the fact that source language available is english only... I agree that is a glitch/like pre-set, that should be changed because it assumes that user wants to translate from english only to other languages. Guess what AstralisLux, I did what you recommended and wasted my time opening a new account because it did not help... the language source remains english. Good news are that google has another tool that allows us to select source language instead using google translator kit, you can use the generic translate.google at translate google.
    Hey you do not have to thank me for figuring this one out, just follow me at twitter and stay connected to me and my daily international education discoveries. at twitter.com/educaramba

    EduCaramba says in portuguese, o google translator kit não éducaramba! Porque limita a escolha de língua origem a inglês somente. Boas noticias translate.google.com permite escolher a lingua de origem,meu voto vai para translate.google, esse sim éducaramba!!!
    para me seguir é facil, me adicione at twitter.com/educaramba

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  28. I want to also edit the source text, but I can't.

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  29. it's really help me, thanx google...

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  30. How to integrate Google Translator to automatically translate each pages you write on your blogger. I need this because when people search my site http://cheap-activation.com in any language it will appear according to the language they search

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  31. Why I can not translate from Turkish to English by using Google Translate Toolkit?

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  32. I can not use Google Translate Toolkit to translate PDF files.

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  33. I think it is a great idea to integrate Google Translate Toolkit to Google Docs and translate.googleusercontent.com

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  34. While I use commercial TM, I've been using this tool for a while beceause I like taking my translations everywhere and like the idea of using a free service that I do not have to pay upgrades for. While it is not the best out there right now, it is innovative in the sense that there a large pool of translations out there that you can use -- but I would be weary of these as I have found mistakes.

    But most importantly, I use this tool for consistency purposes. Also, never never use the automatic translation tool that uses computer translation. Make sure you have that turned off on your settings. I forgot to change the translation given by the computer once and delivered it to the client as it was!

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  35. I think Google Translate Toolkit should offer a tool to create online TMX files like.

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  36. We can not edit the source text and translate PDF files. Could you please offer a tool to translate PDF files?

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  37. Can google introduce a translation search engine like Tele.Translator.Network ?

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  38. Wow, it is an excellent tool! The only problem is that it doesn't work with google docs. While google docs can do the translation it would be much better to be able to open the translation toolkit and there fine polish the translation.
    It is weird for the toolkit to be able to translate wiki pages, word and open office documents but not being able to work with the google docs.
    Please integrate the two!

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  39. Is there a way to use google translator for my website, but edit the translation? English to Spanish translation is not great. I'd like to fine tune it. Thanks

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  40. is this safe? if i need to translate a document protected under NDA is the document becomes public along with the translation once uploaded?

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  41. I want to translate a document which I wrote in Hindi,to English.I saved this document
    in word-processor file with other documents. How can I translate it in English. I dont know how to download the toolkit.

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  42. where do you download Google Translator's toolkit from?

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  43. Can i download or import the .tmx file i created on my way? It'd be awesome. If there's any help with that...

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  44. hi
    you do not download google toolkit but rather you use it online.
    its an online service, not offline

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  45. i need to use the .tmx so i can upload it in trados since gtt doesn't offer downloading a bilingual file. how can i do that?

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  46. I just want to say few words.Google is providing this service for free, and we should not forget this fact,if it was paid i can understand people complaining about it , but this service is free, its your choice to use it or not.

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  47. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  48. Hello, whenever I try to upload a 1.4 tmx file, I keep getting “internal server error”. even the example at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_Memory_eXchange doesn’t works.

    However, there’s nowhere to report it, as usual with Google.

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