Google's new search translator - Blog - General Coding Tips for Web Design

GJC Website Design UK, Joomla Developer, VirtueMart Developer, Template Developer, web site designs, England, Britain, UK, Belgium, search-engine optimisation (SEO). Multilingual.

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I came across this new beta tool from Google last week. I haven't tested it extensively but on first appraisal it seems to do what it says on the box.

The idea is you type in your search term, tell Google what language its in and what language you want to search in. It then translates the search term and dishes up the results, translated on the left hand side and original on the right. google-translate-search

I immediately found a problem going from English to German as it doesn't compound the word into those famous German compound nouns and verbs. An example is "balance sheet optimisation" gives you a search term via Google translate of "Bilanz optimierung", wrong. This returns results unrelated to balance sheet optimisation.
It should be "Bilanzoptimierung", this achieving the correct results.

You can edit the translated search term via the interface - "Not quite right? Edit" link.

A quick test of English to French business terms proved a failure with most queries returning wrong results. The problem is the same as with all machine translation in that they return a literal translation for terms that are colloquial expressions. In French "conseil en gestion" is a common term for "management consulting" but Google translate returns "board of trustees".

It does a bit better on more simple queries and even gave me this site for "web design liège", English to German.

All in all it can be another tool in multilingual SEO array if only to get an idea of comparative terms and how Google sees the pages.
Last Updated on Tuesday, 10 March 2009 10:29
 



Google's new search translator|Blog | General Coding Tips for Web Design



GJC Website Design UK, Joomla Developer, VirtueMart Developer, Template Developer, web site designs, England, Britain, UK, Belgium, search-engine optimisation (SEO). Multilingual.


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