Skip to main content

4 Reasons Why Google Translate Beats The Other Services


436457_guidebooksOnce upon a time, online translation services were a seldom seen wonder. Now, the internet is bulking with them. Suddenly you need to make a choice; whether to go with Babel Fish, WordLingo, Google Translate, or yet another new service. Great, if not for the fact that choice always creates the possibility of error. And with so many services available, people just don’t know what to choose.
A lot of my friends – who are not at all tech deprived – ended up using a bad translation service. Bad: in terms of grammar, accuracy and overall user experience. This article will show four reasons why the Google Translate tool beats (most, leaving a margin for undiscovered greatness) other translation services. Note that this is not an opinionated, but a factual argument, but that shouldn’t keep you from disagreeing.

1. Fluent Language Use

For most languages, but especially for English and Spanish (two of the world’s most popular languages), your translations will prove incredibly fluent – more akin to spoken language, rather than the usual broken translations. This is not a coincidence.
Google collected tons of data on spoken language, and the Google Translate tool has a good sense of what sounds natural, and what does not. Even now, users can still suggest better translation alternatives – but more about that below.
As with all of these services, errors can still be made, and having a rudimentary knowledge of your goal language certainly doesn’t hurt.

2. Open To Alternatives

A living language constantly keeps involving, and so should a good translation service. Knowing a translation can always be improved, Google allows you to suggest alternative translations to words or sentences. So you can do your part in keeping the quality top notch.
Screen shot 2010-02-18 at 17.00.47

3. Supplying Synonyms (and Antonyms)

A well-written sentence is much like a jigsaw puzzle. There are always a few pieces left that you can slam in there, but it won’t look right. Similarly, there are words that sound better in context than others, even if they mean the same thing. Never mind the words that have a multitude of unrelated translations.
If you translate a word in the Google Translate tool, you’ll often get more than you bargained for. In a good way. Supplementing the most popular translation is a list of synonyms; alternative words with a similar meaning. Sometimes, although admittedly seldom, you also get antonyms – words that mean the exact opposite.
Screen shot 2010-02-18 at 16.55.53
Why would you need, or rather, even be interested in synonyms and acronyms? Simple. Some alternatives will sound better than others, even if they aren’t the most popular ones.

4. Swift, Intuitive User Interface

Being perfectly aware that the interface is unfamiliar terrain for a factual argument, there’s one aspect that wouldn’t hurt to be named. I’m talking about the instant translation feature.
With the languages specified, you have to start typing to see an instant translation. Why must it be necessary to press another ‘translate’ button? Because it isn’t, and it certainly shouldn’t. This ‘instant results’ is something we see ever more often in search engines, and Google made a smart move integrating it into Google Translate. Regardless of personal preference, things like this make user interaction not only faster, but also more intuitive.
Screen shot 2010-02-18 at 17.25.47
Of course, not everyone will agree with the above. If you still prefer another translation service, tell us why in the comments section below.
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 26, 2010 at 4:19 AM

    Google Translate is good for getting a general idea of obscure languages, I feel like. I am a Spanish teacher and part- time translator for friends and small businesses, so I tend to shy away from using a single translator. I think it is better to use the Spanish translation tool from SpanishDict.com if you're going to use one at all. Just my opinion as a Spanish teacher. It has three translators (including Google) so that you can compare the translations and find the best option.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

Sometimes what we hide is more important than what we reveal. Especially, documents with sensitive information, some things are supposed to be ‘for some eyes only’. Such scenarios are quite common, even for the more un-secretive among us. You want to show someone a letter composed in MS Word, but want to keep some of the content private; or it’s an official letter with some part of it having critical data. As important as these two are, the most common use could involve a normal printing job. Many a time we have to print different versions of a document, one copy for one set of eyes and others for other sets. Rather than creating multiple copies and therefore multiple printing jobs, what if we could just do it from the same document?  That too, without the hassle of repeated cut and paste. We can, with a simple feature in MS Word – it’s just called Hidden and let me show you how to use it to hide text in Microsoft Word 2007. It’s a simple single click process. Open the docum...
1 comment
Read more

Build Your Own Awesome Personal 3D Avatar with Avatara

Do you use social networks and want to build your own awesome 3D avatar? Maybe you want to send someone a cute cuddly image of yourself (kind of)? Or maybe you have your own ideas of what you would do with an Avatar… Well look no further than Avatara which I discovered from the MakeUseOf directory . You can create 3d avatars out of pre-set up templates or create your own from scratch. To start, visit Avatara’s homepage . You will see this screen: Click Get Started to umm, get started! That will take you to this screen: You see that you can build your own Avatar using an uploaded head shot like the Obama one above (just an example, guys). Or roll with one of their awesome avatars. I chose to start with a blank avatar by clicking Start with a blank avatar at the bottom of the screen. That takes you to here: I clicked on the filter at the top and told it to filter out everything but male characters and then I saw this: I rolled with Buck and continued. You need to click Select...
1 comment
Read more

Ex-Skypers Launch Virtual Whiteboard Deekit

Although seriously long in the tooth and being disrupted by a plethora of startups, for many years Skype has existed as an almost ubiquitous app in any remote team’s toolkit. So it seems apt that a new startup founded by a team of ex-Skype employees is set to tackle another aspect of online collaboration. Deekit, which exits private beta today, is a virtual and collaborative whiteboard to help remote teams work smarter. The Tallinn, Estonia-based startup is headed up by founder and CEO, Kaili Kleemeier, who was previously a Head of Operations at Skype. She and three colleagues quit the Internet calling giant in 2012 and spent a year researching ideas in the remote team space. They ended up focusing on creating a new virtual whiteboard, born out of Kleemeier’s experience collaborating with technical teams remotely, specifically helping Skype deal with incident management. “Working with remote teams has been a challenge in many ways – cultural differences, language differences, a...
Post a Comment
Read more