International Law

Google Translation Onebox

By Handakte

Google has a new direct result showing translations, triggered for certain queries. Here are some examples:

[translate Hello into French] - Google offers the translation ?allô, bonjour?.

[translate Einkommensteuer] - ?Einkommensteuer? is a German word meaning ?income tax?. As the target language was omitted, Google translates to English. Instead of the short translation Google finds a longer phrase in its dictionary and presents the English text ?their joint assessment for income tax?.

[translate glasses into German] - glasses are an ambiguous term; Google finds two translations but doesn?t use the shortest words in their translation (e.g. they show ?Lesebrille? ? reading glasses ? instead of just ?Brille?).

[translate friend into Chinese] - Instead of just showing ????, Google prints the text ??…??;??, (?????)???? as translation. Similarly, entering

[translate hello into Chinese] results in much more than just the appropriate word.

Quelle: blogoscoped vom 25.08.2008

Full post as published by Handakte WebLAWg on August 25, 2008 (boomark / email).