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I mentioned in the last issue that
all of the information appearing here would also be made available on the EAMT
Website at http://www.eamt.org/resources.In fact, the "archival" version
appeared before MTNI, and I got some feedback on the column before it was even
published!In this issue, I list free
online MT services that are based on commercially available MT products.
If you are aware of others, let me know and
they will be added to the website.
Maybe in a future issue I can tackle the research systems available
online. As always, I welcome your
input.Pass on your requests and
recommendations for valuable MT resources to the resources column editor,
Laurie Gerber, mtni@eamt.org
Free Translation
The MT mailing list
(mt-list@eamt.org) recently
included links to several sites with free translation (thanks to David Mowatt
for compiling this list, and Jeff Allen for additional links). I
followed up on each of them and summarize my findings below.Apologies to
any that have been overlooked in this list.I have covered at least 4
features for each system:
Languages available.
To conserve space, the following languages are abbreviated with their
first initial: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian,
Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.Other language names are written out.
Size limit of text to be translated for free.
Input format (generally plaintext or a URL/website
address).
Translation Engine name.
Disclaimers:The tests and searches I did to find the information below
were done in a systematic, but informal manner. I have not contacted the
providers to verify the information below, and omitted many details
about the sites, providers and services. The recently released
compendium of translation software by John Hutchins will include
information about online services, with more useful information about
the companies that provide such services. The services are listed
ROUGHLY in descending order of the size of text allowed, but be aware
that the services offered change frequently, and there are occasional
outages. Finally, I was surprised to find that about half of the
websites made it relatively difficult to find out what engine was being
used. If the free service is intended to promote sales, we have a way
to go!
Website: http://www.freetranslation.com/
Languages: E->FGINSP; FSG->E
Size limit: 4-5 pages (1,300 words) or 1 (any size) web page
Input: plaintext or URL
Engine: Transparent Language TranscendRT
Website: http://www.gy.com/language.htm
Languages: SFG->E; E->FIGSP
Size limit: one web page
Input: URL only
Engine: Uncredited, but seems to be powered by
freetranslation.com, and coincidentally offers the same language pairs (with
the exception of Norwegian.)
Website: http://www.translate.ru/
Languages: E->RFS; R-> EGF; G->FER; F->EGR; I->R
Size limit: Not specified, but my 1,200-word text
translated without error messages.
Input: plaintext
Engine: PROMT
Special lexicons: Vary by language pair, for example, automotive, computers and internet, business, sports, jurisprudence, or travel for the E->R language.Other language pairs had no special lexicons available.
Website: http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/services/default.asp
Language pairs: E->GIPS; F->EGI; G->EF; I->EFS; P->E; S->EI
Size limit: 5K of text (approx 800 words or 2 pages)
Input: plaintext only
Engine: L&H
Special lexicons: general, business, computers,
legal, medical
Web sites with Systran
Website 1: http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/
Languages: E->FGIPS; F->G; G->F; FGIPSR->E
Website 2: http://www.systransoft.com/
Languages: E->FGIPS; F->EG; G->EF; IPS->E
(Note: Another set of French source language pairs shows up only AFTER the first translation run: F->DIPS. I have notified SYSTRAN of this quirk.)
Website 3: http://voila.com/Services/Translate/
Languages: E->FGIPS; F->DEGIPS; G->EF; IPS->E
Website 4: http://translator.go.com/
Languages: E->FGIPS; FGIPS->E
Size limit: 5K of text (up to 25k on go.com)
Input: Plaintext or URL
Engine: SYSTRAN
Website: http://www.tranexp.com/
Languages: Translation between any of: EDFGJPR,
Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic,
Polish, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, Swedish, Welsh (note: systems for both
Latin American and European Spanish and Portuguese are offered.)
Size limit: No explicit size limit, but I found that
a translation of 350 words went through, but one of 550 words bogged down. A longer passage of 1,200 words did not even
seem to invoke the translation engine.
Input: plaintext or URL
Engine: Translation Experts' InterTran
Output feature: For many of the translated words, the
user can see alternative words/phrases that could be used to translate the
source word.
Website feature: Under the "links & info ->resources" item on the site's menu, you can jump to the websites of a large number of international newspapers published online. The translation software will translate those that are not in English.
Website 1: http://www.t-mail.com/index2.shtml
Website 2: http://www.t-mail.com/cgi-bin/tsail
Website 3: http://www.t-mail.com/t-text.shtml
Languages: E->CFGIJNPS; F->EGI; G->EF; I-EFGS; P->E; S->EI
Size limit: Not stated, but tests of the plaintext translation at Website 3 indicated no more than a medium-sized paragraph.
Input: Website 1, submission via email (cc the message to SourceLang-TargetLang@t-mail.com e.g. French-English@t-mail.com.The translation will go to the "to" addresses in the message.);
Website 2, URL;
Website 3, plaintext
Engine: T-mail seems to draw on more than one translation engine (all uncredited.)I ran German-English, and English-Spanish short translations on the T-Text page, which came out identical to the freetranslation/Transcend output. However, there are a number of language pairs here not available from freetranslation.
Website: http://www.voila.fr/
Languages: F->EGR; E->FRS; G->FER; R->FEG; I->R
Size limit: about a paragraph
Input: plaintext or URL
Engine: Softissimo's Reverso
Website: http://t1.sail-labs.com/t1probe.html
Languages: G->E; S->E
Input: plaintext
Engine:L&H T1 (derived from METAL)
Special lexicons: General tech, data processing, economy and trade
Website: http://lexica.epiuse.co.za/CyberTrans.html
Languages: E->FG PLUS Afrikaans, Zulu; FGP, Afrikaans, Swahili, Tswana->E
Size limit: 20 words
Input: plaintext
Engine: CyberTrans (formerly known as EPI-use)
Website: http://translate.gotoworld.com/
Languages: Translation between any of: ACDEFGINPRS, Czech, Danish, Esperanto,
Farsi, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Latin, Polish, Romanian,
Slovak, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Zulu
Size limit: one word (for free without downloading);
unlimited with regular products.
Input: plaintext (for free one-word lookup service)
or URL (you must download and install the GoToWorld browser and plug-ins -- many
are free.)
Engine: Language Force's Universal Translator
Website http://www.handyserv.com/inde x.html
Languages: Bilingual dictionary lookup
between any of: DEFGIPS
Size limit: 20 words
Input: plaintext
Output: Source language grammatical
information for each sense of each word, and the appropriate translation for
each of those senses (as individual items, not recomposed into target language
sentences.)
Engine: Language Dynamics' WinDi
Website: http://www.babylon.com/
Languages: E->CDFGIJPS, Hebrew, Swedish
Size limit: single words only
Input: plaintext
Engine: Babylon
Website: http://www.ling98.com
Languages: R->EG; E->R,Ukrainian; G->R, Ukrainian; Ukrainian-> EG
Size limit: several pages
Input: plaintext only
Engine: PARS by Lingvistica 98, Inc.
Website:http://www.foreignword.com/Tools/transnow.htm
This website has already done a lot of the legwork
I attempted. They have links and information on 19 different
translation services online (one not free). Theirs are all indexed
by language pair. I have used their information to update my listing
with the items below.
Other services: word/term lookup tool (see below), and an international
database/directory of (human) translators by language and region at:
http://www.foreignword.com/Translators/translators.htm
Website: http://www.logovista.jp/
Languages: E->J
Size limit: several pages (I ran 4,500 words with no problem)
Input: plain text
Engine: Language Engineering Corp. "LogoVista"
Note: This page is all in Japanese. Look hard for the little link on the left side "English Homepage". From there, choose "online demo".
Website: http://www.sancho.com/trans.html
Languages: S->E
Size limit: several pages (I ran 2,000+ words with no problem)
Input: plain text
Engine: Sancho - seems like a non-commercial home-grown system
Website: http://gpltrans.grmbl.com/
Languages: E->FGSP, FGSP->E
Size limit: At least several pages
Input: plain text, URL
Engine: GPLTrans - a non-commercial home-grown system
Special features: email translation
Website:http://www.postchi.com/
Languages: E->Persian
Size limit: I had no trouble with a smallish (800-word) translation. But with a larger
test (1,400+ words) my Netscape and everything else froze.
Input: plain text
Engine: Poschi "NetNeegar"
Special features:Text is entered in an email message window. The resulting translation
can be sent as a message. Persian script is rendered as images, so no font support is
necessary.
Website: http://www.e-lingo.com/text/index.html/
Languages: E->FGIJPS, F->EGI, G->EF, I->EFGS, J->E, P->E, S->EI
Size limit: about 350 words (text beyond 350 words was returned as source language text.)
Engine: Uncredited (L&H and Transparent Language?)
Website: http://www.alis.com/translate_online.html
Languages: E->CFGIJSP, FGIJPS->E
Size limit: approx. 100 words
Input: plain text
Engine: SYSTRAN and IBM
Website: http://www.pinksoftware.com/Trans/
Languages: E->Afrikaans, Zulu; Afrikaan, Swahili, Tswana->English
Size limit: 220 characters
Input: plain text typed or pasted into dialog box.
Engine: "Translator" (The corporate profile says only that they have 'leased the rights to sell "Translator"')
Website: http://www.tarjim.com
Languages: English->Arabic
Size limit: Seemed to translate about 125 words out of 1,100 word plain text. The whole
text of a large webpage was translated.
Input: plaintext or URL
Engine: Sakhr Software
Special features:21 special glossaries and several features allowing customization of
the translation run (e.g. "better accuracy, less layout")
Other services: Free Arabic OS for palm pilot.
Note: This URL will take you to the all Arabic site. Look for
a link to an English version in the upper right corner.
Dictionary and term translation
Website: http://www.foreignword.com
Languages: 56 source languages and 58 target languages, for almost 300 language pair combinations.
Size limit: words and terms only
Input: text typed into dialog box.
Engine: Searches 146 online dictionaries
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