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Google translate

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Corso finanziato dal FSE 2007/2013 - Avviso 20/2011Progetto 2007.IT.051.PO.003/II/D/F/9.2.1/0276 “Energia e tutela ambientale”

Google translate

Google has come up with many interesting and innovating products from its beginning till now. It has reached an iconic status and is a familiar name almost all over the world. No matter which country, region or culture, Google is the primary and most popular search engine used by people everywhere. The Google translator is one such innovation. But how does the program work and can it really offer an accurate translation?

These questions pertaining to the Google translator can be answered in a series of steps. Before knowing the ‘how,’ the ‘what’ has to be answered. Google translator is a free translation service offered by Google that can produce a translation of a particular sentence in about 57 different languages. The Google translator can also translate words and entire web pages as well. It is a very convenient tool as it makes information accessible to people who might not understand the language pertaining to the information source.

Now the ‘how’ part of the question. Google translator is able to translate by looking for patterns in the existing hundreds of millions of documents and decides which one is more suited for the situation. These hundreds of millions of documents are translations done by human beings and stored by Google. So basically the Google translator works by a process of intelligent guesses although officially this process is called a statistical machine translation.

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Now here in lies the catch. Google translator can effectively translate information into various languages but the accuracy of the translation is not perfect in any way. The translation is after all done by a machine which looks at a translation in different ways than a real human would. Human beings are able to learn a new language by navigating and understanding the rules that govern it. But the method used by the Google translator is a different one.

Therefore in the end, Google translator can produce the gist of the translation you need but cannot be used as a tool for complex translation problems. Taking a real language class would be far more productive. But you might never know perhaps in a few years Google translator and other translation programs would be enough to comfortably tour a foreign country without knowing the language.

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Pros and cons of Google Translate

The pros and cons of Google Translate have implications for professionals in the language services industry: translators, interpreters, and language services providers. But the tool’s advantages and disadvantages also have an impact on everyday users and language learners—not to mention professionals in non–language-related industries.

Google’s translation tool represents undeniable progress in the field of translation technology: Google Translate is free, incredibly fast, and much more accurate than previous online translation tools. However, it still cannot rival skilled human translators when it comes to conveying all meaning accurately and naturally. When it encounters a word or phrase for which it lacks a sufficient number of translations, Google Translate may not produce the best translation, and may output a translation that is unnatural or simply wrong. Read on for RedLine’s take on the pros and cons of Google Translate.

Google Translate in action.

The pros Google Translate is fast. Incredibly fast. So fast that no human translator—or team of

translators—can hope to compete with it in sheer output. A skilled human translator can translate an average of 2,000 words per day (more or less depending upon the difficulty of the source text.) Contrast that with the 2,000 words that Google Translate can convert in, oh, 0.8 seconds.

Google Translate is free. Just like its search tool and many of its other offerings, Google’s translation tool costs the user nothing.

Google Translate uses a statistical learning approach, not a rules-based approach. The result is that many (but not all) translations are culled from “real” translations (those done by humans) already available online.

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The cons Google Translate makes mistakes. Malaysia’s Sun Daily newspaper recently reported on

an interview that local media conducted with Google research scientist Ashish Venugopal. Venugopal explained why translation errors occur in Google Translate and where the technology is headed.

Google Translate’s quality varies from language pair to language pair. The tool may produce a usable gist for an English-to-Spanish translation. Billions of words for each language can easily be found in cyberspace. Not so for Danish and Romanian. Users who need a translation for rarer language pairs may find Google’s translation tool unhelpful.

Google Translate doesn’t offer the user any form of quality control. The search giant’s massive market dominance leads user to implicitly trust its offerings. But a user has no way of knowing whether Google’s German translation of an English text is any good. Simply getting a result—any result—in no way guarantees a good result.

How does Google Translate work?

Google’s translation tool makes use of the search giant’s stupefying web-crawling capacity to enable its translations. This is different from other rules-based translation tools. Rules-based systems require substantial work from linguists, not to mention massive digital dictionaries. The result is an attempt at something close to word-for-word translation, which professional human translators know just doesn’t work.

So what does Google do? Rather than use a rules-based system, Google Translate uses a statistical learning approach. It feeds billions of words (both monolingual text and “aligned” text that humans have translated) into its program, then lets the tool find popular matches.

The result? The tool can correctly translate the French phrase comme un éléphant dans un magasin de porcelaine into English: “like a bull in a china shop.” French speakers use éléphant and English speakers use “bull”—different animals, same idea. A rules-based approach to the same phrase might produce something like “an elephant in a porcelain store,” a word-for-word result that native English speakers would recognize as wrong.

Pros and cons of Google Translate: the verdict

So is Google Translate a useful tool? Well, yes and no. It depends entirely on your needs. A Fortune 500 company would risk its reputation as well as better sales figures if it relied solely on machine translation—it’s just not accurate enough to be used in commercial translation. But a high school student doing a research project may get some benefit from seeing a “gist” translation of foreign research. She just needs to be aware of the tool’s limitations.

What is Google Translate?

Google Translate is a free automatic translator. It works without the intervention of human translators, using state-of-the-art technology instead. Google Translate currently supports translation between any of 64 languages.

Translation to and from Alpha languages may not work as well as other languages, as these systems are still in early stages of development. Learn more about the inner workings of Google Translate.

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1. Google Translate basics

Translate text instantly

To translate words and phrases, simply select your translation languages and start typing. The translation result should appear instantly as you type, without you having to click a single button. Note that you'll need Javascript enabled to take advantage of our instant translation feature. You can always click the Translate button to trigger a translation.

When you translate a single word, you may see a simple dictionary at the bottom indicating parts of speech and possible word variations. For most language pairs, you'll also see a View Detailed Dictionary link. This will display a more detailed Google Dictionary page with example sentences, images, and more.

If you aren't sure what language you're attempting to translate, the "Detect language option" can figure this out for you. The accuracy of the automatic language detection increases with the amount of text entered.

Read and listen to your translation

If you're trying to translate to a non-Roman script, you'll see a Read phonetically link next to the translation. Clicking this link will spell out the translation in Roman(Latin) characters. This feature is currently available for Armenian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Georgian, Greek, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Maltese, Russian, Serbian, Thai and Ukrainian.

For many languages, you may see also a speaker button near the translated text. Click this icon to hear a machine-generated spoken version of your translation. This feature is currently available for English, French, German, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Italian and Spanish.

An experimental text-to-speech system (TTS) is available for several other languages, powered by the eSpeak open-source speech synthesizer: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. You may notice significant differences in speech quality between the experimental languages and the other available languages.

Input text phonetically

Many languages are difficult to type if you don't own a special layout keyboard for that script. When translating from Russian, Hindi, Serbian, Greek, Arabic, Persian or Urdu, you'll see an "Allow phonetic typing" checkbox near the input area. This feature allows you to type these languages as they sound in English - for example, "aap" for "आप" in Hindi. When you press space, the word will be converted to Hindi script, and its translation will be displayed below. The phonetic typing feature is on by default; uncheck the checkbox to turn it off, when you want to input Roman characters. Phonetic typing does not interfere if you are using a native-layout keyboard for such languages.

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If you still have questions about Google Translate and want to learn more, or would like to give us your feedback, please see the Google Translate discussion group.

2. Translate whole webpages and documents

Translate entire webpages

Translate an entire web page directly from Google Translate, simply by entering its address (e.g. "www.google.com") into the input box and clicking Translate.

If you hover your mouse over the translated text, the original text for the highlighted segment is displayed in an info bubble just above the translated text. To see all of the original text of the page, click the View: Original radio button in the top frame of the translated page. Now, when you hover your mouse over the original text, the automatic translation for the highlighted segment is displayed in an info bubble.

Translate documents from your computer

Google Translate also provides an easy way to translate whole documents, without the need for copying and pasting large blocks of text. Simply click the translate a document link and submit your file as a PDF, TXT, DOC, PPT, XLS or RTF. Please note that some of your original formatting may not be preserved.

If you need to create and translate content in other languages and would like to improve your efficiency and accuracy using translation tools like automatic translation, translation search and glossaries, use the Translator Toolkit. This allows you to translate and edit your documents online, and collaborate with others. Learn more about the Translator Toolkit

3. How can I help improve Google Translate?

Contribute a better translation

We're constantly working to improve the quality of our translations. Even today's most sophisticated software, however, doesn't approach the fluency of a native speaker or possess the skill of a professional translator. Automatic translation is very difficult, as the meaning of words depends on the context in which they're used. While we are working on the problem, it may be some time before anyone can offer human quality translations. In the meantime, we hope you find the service we provide useful for most purposes. If, while using Google Translate, you notice that our translation could be better, hover your cursor over the translated term and click Contribute a better translation to suggest improvements.

Help us support new languages

We're also working to support other languages and will introduce them as soon as the automatic translation meets our standards. It's difficult to project how long this will take, as the problem is complex and each language presents its own unique challenges. In order to develop new languages and improve the quality of existing languages, we need large amounts of bilingual texts. You can help by using Translator Toolkit for translating or uploading your translation memories into Translator Toolkit.

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4. General information for webmasters

Preventing translation of your webpages

If you're a webmaster and would prefer your web page not be translated by Google Translate, just insert the following meta tag into your HTML file:<meta name="google" value="notranslate">

If you don't mind your web page being translated by Google Translate, except for a particular section (like an email address, for example), just add class=notranslate to any HTML element to prevent that element from being translated. For example:Email us at <span class="notranslate"> sales at example dot com

From time to time, we may feature certain website URLs on Google Translate to provide demonstrations of our translation technology. Such examples should not be seen as an endorsement by Google of these websites or their content. If your site is featured in this way on Google Translate, and you would rather it weren't, please contact us.

Search engine indexing

The automatically translated version of your web page will not be indexed by search engines.

Google Translated Search

1. What is Translated Search?

Sometimes the best results for your search query may not be in your language. Translated Search is your window into the multilingual web. This feature of Google Search allows you to type queries in your own language and view results from around the world translated back to your language, all powered by Google Translate.

2. How do I use Translated Search?

To search results from websites written in other languages, after you perform a search click on More search tools on the bottom-left hand side of the search results page. Then click on Translated foreign pages.

Google will translate your search term into one or more languages, and then perform a search using the translated terms. The search results are then translated back into the language you selected in the "My language" dropdown. Click a translated result and you'll be taken to an automatically translated version of the page.

If you'd like to search a specific language not listed, click on Add language. Or if you'd like to remove a language, just click on the X next to the language.

Google translates your search term and performs a search using the translated terms. The search results are then translated back into the language you selected in the "My language" dropdown. Click a translated result and you'll be taken to an automatically translated version of the page.

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Edit the translated search term

If you know the translation of your search term isn't quite right, just click Edit next to the translated query on the search results page to edit it. Then press Enter or click the search button to search using the corrected search term.

Advanced search operators

The site: and filetype: advanced search operators are currently supported. You can stop a search term from being translated by putting a + sign in front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the + sign.)

Website Translator plugin for websites

1. What is the Website Translator plugin?

The Website Translator is a plugin powered by Google Translate that can be easily and quickly added to any website to make your website available in other languages. After you add the Website Translator to the pages on your website, your international visitors will be offered the option to view a translated version of your website.

Visitors to your website whose web browser language is different than the language of your website will see an info banner at the top of the page asking them if they'd like to translate the page. Visitors can also translate the page by using the Website Translator's language selector that's embedded in the page

When a visitor translates a page, the Website Translator sends the text of the web page to Google Translate and displays the translated text without reloading or redirecting visitors from the page. If the visitor clicks on a link in the translated page and the linked web page also has the Website Translator plugin embedded in it, the linked web page will also be automatically translated for the them, allowing them to seamlessly browse through your website in their language.

2. How do I add the Website Translator plugin to my page?

Visit the Website Translator setup wizard and follow these simple steps:

1. Enter the URL of the website you'd like to add the Website Translator plugin to2. Select the language that your web page is written in.3. Select the translation languages you would like to make your web page instantly

available in. You can pick all languages, or select individual languages by selecting the "Specific languages" radio button, then checking the languages you'd like to automatically translate your web page into.

4. Choose the way you'd like the Website Translator plugin to be displayed on your page.

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5. Copy the customization meta tag and paste it before the closing tag in the HEAD section of the web pages that you'd like to e

6. And finally, copy and paste the Website Translator plugin code snippet into the BODY section of web pages that you would like to make instantly available in other languages.

3. How can I improve the automatic translation of my website?

You can improve the automatic translations on your website by creating (1) correction entries and/or (2) glossary entries.

A correction entry can be used to improve the translation of specific text segment. The correction entry will only replace the automatic translation of the text segment if it matches it completely.

A glossary entry can be used to improve the translation of a particular word or short phrase that may frequently appear in several text segments. The glossary entry will replace the automatic translation of the word or short phrase in any text segment that contains the source word or short phrase.

Corrections

The best and easiest way to add a correction is to do it in-context on the translated version of the webpage. Here’s how:

1. Make sure the Website Translator plugin has been added to the page2. Translate the web page use the Website Translator’s language dropdown3. Hover your mouse cursor over the translation you’d like to correct. The phrase or

sentence will be highlighted and a tooltip window displaying the original text will appear.

4. If you’re not logged in with your Google Account, click Sign in.5. Click on Contribute a better translation and submit the corrected translation

The next time any user translates the page, your correction will appear instead of the automatic translation.

The correction will also appear in the Website Translator manager where you can edit or delete it.

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Glossaries

Glossary entries can be helpful if your site contains special terminology such as advanced scientific, medical, technical text, etc that require specific translations. For example:

English to French: batching box => bassin de dosage (instead of dosage boîte)

It can also be useful to help ensure that product names or company names are translated the way you’d like. For example:

English to Chinese: Google+ => Google+ (instead of 谷歌+)

Glossaries work best for nouns or noun phrases (1-2 words in length). They’re not as effective when used for verbs or when translating into languages that are highly inflected.

Glossary entries should be used with caution since they can have unintended consequences and can impact many translations.

4. How do I manage translation suggestions from visitors?

When a visitor views the translation of your site using the Website Translator plugin or web page translation feature in Chrome or Google Toolbar, they can suggest a better translation by hovering the mouse cursor over the translation they’d like to correct. The phrase or sentence will be highlighted and a tooltip window displaying the original text will appear. The visitor can then click on Contribute a better translations and submit the corrected translation

Suggestion will appear in Website Translator manager for you or another authorized Editor to approve. To approve a suggestion:

1. Check the checkbox next to the suggestion2. Then click the Approve button below 3. The suggestion then becomes a correction and will appear on the Corrections page

The next time any user translates the page, the correction will appear instead of the automatic translation.

5. How do I invite editors to help manage the translations?

You can invite editors to help add correction/glossary entries and approve suggestions in the Website Translator manager:

1. Click on the Editors link in the left navigation bar. 2. At the bottom of the Editors table, enter a Google Account email address in the text

field and click invite 3. An email invitation with you cc-ed will be sent to the email address you entered

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6. What else should I know about the Website Translator plugin?

Collected information

For normal web pages, Google may log a small portion of the text for translation quality purposes but not in a way that is associated with a Google Account. The website translator also works securely if it's embedded on a web page that is served from a secure server. In such cases, the content of the web page will be sent to Google for translation using a secure connection (HTTPS), and Google will not log any of the text.

Embedding on intranet pages

The Website Translator plugin will work if it's embedded on a web page that's hosted within a corporate intranet. However, since the Element cannot distinguish intranet web pages from normal web pages, intranet web pages are handled like normal web pages. So unless it is hosted on a secure server, a secure connection will not be used to send the content of the web page to Google for translation. As with the translation of normal web pages, Google may log a small portion of the text for translation quality purposes but not in a way that is associated with a Google Account. Please check with your system administrator or IT department before embedding the Translate Web Element on intranet pages.

AdSense

The Website Translator plugin will not interfere with AdSense code that may be embedded in your page.

7. How can I link to a translated version of a web page?

To create a link that automatically translates your Website Translator-enabled page without prompting your users, use the parameter #googtrans(en|TARGET_LANG_CODE). For example, the link http://translate.google.com/support/#googtrans(en|fr) automatically translates the page http://translate.google.com/support/ into French.

8. What else should I know about the Website Translator plugin

Collected information

For normal web pages, Google may log a small portion of the text for translation quality purposes but not in a way that is associated with a Google Account. The website translator also works securely if it's embedded on a web page that is served from a secure server. In such cases, the content of the web page will be sent to Google for translation using a secure connection (HTTPS), and Google will not log any of the text.

Embedding on intranet pages

The Website Translator plugin will work if it's embedded on a web page that's hosted within a corporate intranet. However, since the Element cannot distinguish intranet web pages from normal web pages, intranet web pages are handled like normal web pages. So unless it is

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hosted on a secure server, a secure connection will not be used to send the content of the web page to Google for translation. As with the translation of normal web pages, Google may log a small portion of the text for translation quality purposes but not in a way that is associated with a Google Account. Please check with your system administrator or IT department before embedding the Translate Web Element on intranet pages.

AdSense

The Website Translator plugin will not interfere with AdSense code that may be embedded in your page.

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Per riassumere brevemente in italiano

Che cos'è Google Traduttore?

Google Traduttore è un servizio di traduzione gratuito che offre traduzioni istantanee tra 64 lingue diverse. È in grado di tradurre parole, frasi e pagine web tra qualsiasi coppia di lingue da noi supportate. Con Google Traduttore ci auguriamo di rendere le informazioni universalmente accessibili e utili, indipendentemente dalla lingua in cui sono scritte.

Come funziona?

Quando genera una traduzione, Google Traduttore cerca dei modelli in centinaia di milioni di documenti per scegliere la migliore traduzione da offrirti. Individuando i modelli in documenti che sono già stati tradotti da esseri umani, Google Traduttore può fare congetture intelligenti sulla presumibile correttezza di una traduzione. Questo processo di ricerca dei modelli in grandi quantità di testo si chiama "traduzione automatica statistica". Dal momento che vengono generate dalle macchine, non tutte le traduzioni saranno perfette. Maggiore è il numero di documenti tradotti da esseri umani che Google Traduttore può analizzare in una lingua specifica, migliore sarà la qualità della traduzione generata. Questo è il motivo per cui a volte la precisione della traduzione varierà da lingua a lingua.

Quali lingue sono supportate da Google Traduttore?

Google Traduttore al momento supporta 64 lingue:

Afrikaans Albanese Arabo Bielorusso Bulgaro Catalano Cinese (semplificato) Cinese (tradizionale) Croato Ceco Danese Olandese Inglese Estone Esperanto Filippino Finlandese Francese Galiziano Tedesco Greco Ebraico Hindi Ungherese

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Islandese Indonesiano Irlandese Italiano Giapponese Coreano Lettone Lituano Macedone Malese Maltese Norvegese Persiano Polacco Portoghese Rumeno Russo Serbo Slovacco Sloveno Spagnolo Swahili Svedese Tailandese Turco Ucraino Vietnamita Gallese Yiddish

Le attuali lingue alfa sono:

Armeno Azerbaigiano Basco Georgiano Gujarati Creolo haitiano Kannada Latino Tamil Telugu Urdu

Google Traduttore testa altre lingue, dette "lingue alfa", che potrebbero presentare una qualità della traduzione meno affidabile rispetto alle lingue da noi supportate. Siamo sempre al lavoro per supportare altre lingue che introdurremo non appena la qualità della traduzione automatica sarà conforme ai nostri standard.

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Che cosa posso fare per migliorare la qualità della traduzione?

Se trovi una traduzione che non sembra corretta, spesso Google Traduttore offrirà dei risultati alternativi. Per visualizzarli, fai clic sulla frase in questione. Quando fai clic su una traduzione alternativa migliore, Google Traduttore apprende dal tuo feedback e continua a migliorarsi nel tempo.

Puoi contribuire a migliorare la qualità della traduzione anche utilizzando Translator Toolkit per tradurre oppure caricando le tue memorie di traduzione in Translator Toolkit.

Uso fluente della lingua.

Per la maggior parte delle lingue, ma soprattutto per l’inglese e spagnolo, le traduzioni si rivelano incredibilmente fluente, molto più simili al linguaggio parlato. Questa non è una coincidenza. Google raccoglie tonnellate di dati sulla lingua parlata e lo strumento di Google Translate li usa per le traduzioni. Inoltre gli utenti possono comunque suggerire delle alternative per una traduzione migliore.

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