Google translates search to translate results

 

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By Simon Aughton

Posted on 24 May 2007 at 09:14

Google has added a new feature to its Translate tool that enables you to search foreign language websites using English search terms.

It works by translating the search terms into the specified language - in our example [see picture] the term 'belgian beer' was accurately translated to 'bière belge'. If you are not happy with the translation you can edit it.

Then this new term is used to search websites in its own language.

The results are then presented side-by-side: the native language in a right-hand column alongside the translated results on the left.

'One of our goals at Google is to provide access to all the world's information,' explained Franz Och, research scientist, Maureen Heymans, software engineer, and Jeff Chin, international product manager, on the Google blog. 'A big obstacle for that is the language barrier. If the ideal result page to a query is written in a language that you don't understand, then up until now it would be very hard to get access to this information.'

They concede that machine translation is not perfect. Nonetheless it usually good enough to get the gist of information in a language you do not understand.

'We think this feature will be particularly useful for our international users since although the majority of Internet users out there are non English speakers, a majority of the content on the internet is still in English,' they note.

The new tool is online at the Google Translate beta: translate.google.com/translate_s.