What does Google Translate mean for international language services?

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On Google Translate's sixth birthday this month, its developers had plenty of reasons to celebrate. Two hundred million in fact: that’s the number of people who use its free international language services each month.

“In a given day we translate roughly as much text as you'd find in one million books,” Google Translate engineer Franz Och wrote in a blog post. It’s roughly the same amount all human translators produce in a year.

tags: Google Translate, international language services, machine translation

Machine translation vs humans

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Machine translation might seem like a new phenomenon, but it’s actually 58 years old this month. Researchers at IBM and Georgetown University began developing an automated Russian to English translator in 1954, with operators laboriously punching messages onto cards.

tags: language tools, machine translation, Post-Edited Machine Translation

Reducing translation costs without the need for Google Translate

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Reducing translation costs is a hot topic for businesses small and large. In the past many have turned to good old Google Translate for help, which, while it certainly does aid in reducing translation costs, is also pretty inaccurate.

Nevertheless, web developers were outraged when Google reported its free API was being discontinued. The very same web developers can therefore not be totally surprised at the announcement that the API is back, in a paid-for service.

tags: alternatives to Google Translate, Google API, machine translation, Post-Edited Machine Translation, reducing translation costs, translating

Welsh Assembly slammed for using Google Translate

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The Welsh Assembly got itself into hot water this week after admitting it used Google Translate to translate assembly proceedings.

The move has sparked outrage from cross Welsh translators, branding it ‘ridiculous’.

A recent report stated a 5000-word passage (known as a ‘cofnod’) was copied into Google Translate and was ‘quality assured’ by a member of staff as part of a pilot project.

tags: machine translation, Translation Industry, translators, Welsh to English translation, Welsh translation

Google Translate introduces five new languages

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Google has announced the launch of five new Indic languages on Google Translate.

It’s been a long time in the making for Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu to join the fold, not least because they all involve unique scripts that users will need to download to their computers.

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tags: machine translation, Translation, translation technology

International football chat uses machine translation

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Whereever you go in the world, the one topic that unites just about everyone – regardless of language – is football.

With the World Cup in full swing, the BBC has been exploring the potential of machine translation for real-time international football chat with their World Cup Team Talk forum.

tags: BBC, Google Translate, machine translation, PEMT, World Cup