Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Did you know... that Google offers a translation function?

Did you know... that Google offers a translation function that enables the translation of webpages and text into 51 languages? Available languages include those that use non-Roman alphabets, such as Arabic, Chinese and Russian. Users may enter text or a webpage URL (including PDF files posted to the web - such as Library Guides), and then choose the appropriate origin and target languages. Similarly, if you see a Google Translate widget on a website (as, for example, on this blog), then you can have the entire page translated instantaneously, ... into German or Icelandic for example!

How good are the translations? Well, they are not perfect, and they often need a good deal of proofreading and polishing, but they are fast. Google Translate is likely to be the most useful, when one needs help understanding text written in a language that the user has at least some familiarity with.

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