FreeTranslation.com Blog

Be social with FreeTranslation.com

2009-07-21T06:10:00.010-04:00

Posted by Helen Liley, eBusiness Manager

Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube have experienced rapid growth recently in terms of popularity and Internet traffic world wide.

If people don't speak the same languages within these communities, then FreeTranslation.com is perfect for offering a gist understanding of online conversations.
Simply copy and paste messages into our Free Text Translation box, select your languages and translate. Plus, we have even more languages available now.

For Facebook users, our Facebook Application gives you the ability to instantly translate your online conversations between you and your Facebook Friends, as well as translate your Wall posts.

FreeTranslation.com has become even more social with a Facebook Group and we're now on Twitter.

Keep up to date with the latest news, and give us your feedback

Follow us on Twitter.
Join our group in Facebook.

Don't forget with Chat Translator, you can translate your online instant messages so you can chat online and be social with friends in different languages.

New languages available on FreeTranslation.com

2009-07-02T11:57:00.006-04:00

Posted by Helen Liley, eBusiness Manager

Now you can translate 85 language pairs in 36 languages with FreeTranslation.com.

SDL FreeTranslation.com have partnered with Language Weaver to bring you more language pairs to translate, and more languages. With new languages available to translate to or from, you can now translate between 85 language pair possibilites.

Not only have we introduced new languages such as Thai, Hungarian, Urdu and Persian which translate to and from English, we have also included new language pairs which are not based on English. Pairs such as French to German, Italian to Spanish and Arabic to French are now available.
Go take a look.

You can now translate Polish, Korean, Hindi and many more! Take a look now by visiting FreeTranslation.com and selecting your source language.

These new languages are provided as part of our commitment to provide useful and free translation gadgets and tools to the world. You can see other tools and gadgets in our Shop.

Don't forget to Join us on Facebook, or Follow us on Twitter.

Happy Father's Day, Feliz Día del Padre, Alles Gute zum Vatertag

2009-06-16T05:16:00.007-04:00

Posted by Helen Liley, eBusiness Manager

Father's Day is a day to honour Fathers and is celebrated in many countries on the third Sunday in June. The day typically involves giving gifts and cards to Fathers and Grandfathers to thank them.

To help the world to celebrate Father's Day on the 21 June, FreeTranslation.com has translated popular phrases into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese and put them onto FreeTranslation.com.

Wish your Dad 'Happy Father's Day' in French, tell him he's the 'Best Dad' in Italian, or simply say 'Thank You' in Spanish.

Don't forget about our other translation tools available in our Shop. You can translate whilst surfing the web with our Accelerators, translate Microsoft Word documents with Desktop Translator, or translate whilst you chat online to friends with our Facebook Application or Chat Translator.

Happy Father's Day to all Fathers and Grandfathers.

Announcing our Survey Results and Prize Winner

2009-04-29T05:13:00.007-04:00

Posted by Helen Liley, eBusiness Manager

Towards the end of last year, we ran a survey on FreeTranslation.com because we wanted to know more about you, our site visitors. We asked you a number of questions about your age, where you live, what you think of FreeTranslation.com and what else you’d like to see on the site.
In return, we ran a prize draw to win a 16gb iPod Nano, in a colour of your choice.

The lucky winner of our draw is Scott Kellas who has now received his black Nano, and said:

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you and the good people at SDL and FreeTranslation.com! I have been using the site for just over a year now and have always been happy with the results I’ve been provided, I’ve even managed to impress some native speakers when I used the different languages FreeTranslation.com offers. When you contacted me initially, I admit I was a bit skeptical about having won the sweepstakes, as I so very rarely participate in online surveys. Well, after having received my 16 gigabyte IPOD Nano, I can attest to the legitimacy and can only say how thrilled I am that I actually won! I’m very excited by this, as I never win anything, much less anything from online.

Thanks to Scott for his quote, and most of all Congratulations! Here’s what we found out about our visitors from the survey:

Almost half of you live in the US, that's 46% of you. 12% live in the UK.

Most of you are aged 13 - 16 years old, but we now know that a lot of you are in your 20's and 30's.

A lot of you are Students, and use the site to help with your homework.

Most of you speak English as a native language, although 15% speak Spanish.

The majority of you are female – 56% in fact.

Almost half of you are repeat visitors – we thank you for this, look forward to welcoming you back, and remind you to tell your friends about us!

Many of you visited the site because you are learning a language. We now have some learning language tools specifically for you on the site. Read our article on what’s available, and check out the language learning resources we have especially for you.

We asked you if you were aware of the other services and tools we have available. Many of you were not. Don't forget that you can always find details of our free and premium products on our Shop page, where we also have a range of new tools and gadgets. You told us in the survey that you wanted to see more translation widgets, so we have obliged!

If there are other tools or services in general you'd like to see on FreeTranslation.com, then let us know by commenting on this article, or via our FreeTranslation.com Facebook Group.

Learning a New Language? This is for You

2009-03-25T09:49:00.013-04:00

Posted by Helen Liley, eBusiness Manager

For our visitors who are learning a language, we have partnered with Transparent Language to bring together a comprehensive collection of learning resources to FreeTranslation.com. Specially designed for those learning a language, you will find the BYKI™ 'Word Of the Day', learning cards, language and local culture blogs, survival phrases, online tests, as well as fun online games.

FreeTranslation.com now offers the best language learning content from Transparent Language and their Byki software and online community. We have language learning resources if you are learning Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish.

From Blog articles on French language and culture, to the Portuguese Word of the Day, to free Russian Software downloads, there is always something new to help you learn a new language at FreeTranslation.com. If you are learning Italian, looking for German language cards, searching for Spanish survival phrases or wanting to test your Russian, we have it all.

You can get free express software to help with learning a language, and access to discounts on complete language learning packages.

Plus, don't forget that you can also use FreeTranslation.com to translate words and phrases online from English into these languages, as well as instantly translate many languages into English. Or, use our web page translator to translate your favourite website into your language. We've also got some new translation gadgets and widgets available to download and use.

If there are other language learning tools, or services in general you'd like to see on FreeTranslation.com, then let us know by commenting on this article, or via our FreeTranslation.com Facebook Group.

New Translation Tools, Widgets and Gadgets

2009-03-20T08:54:00.008-04:00

Posted by Helen Liley, eBusiness Manager

We’re constantly adding new translation tools to FreeTranslation.com. This week, we have added lots of new tools to our Shop page, plus you can now change your view of this page to only show you our premium products, tools for websites, document translation and other categories of translation tools.

Here’s some more details about our new tools.

Free Text Translator
Our Free Text Translator is a tool you add to your own website and lets your website visitors translate anything they wish directly from your web page. All they have to do is type or paste text into the translation box we provide, and then translate into 10 languages.

Translation Accelerator
We know that many of you want to translate web pages or snippets of text while surfing the Internet. Our Translation Accelerator for Internet Explorer and Firefox mean you can do just that! We have individual accelerators for 11 languages, and each of them work with Internet Explorer 8 and, as a plug-in, with Firefox.

Widgets and Gadgets
If you use iGoogle, Netvibes, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Mac OSX you can now use our Widgets and Gadgets to translate with FreeTranslation.com. Simply get the gadget which is right for you and get translating!

New Facebook application
Our Facebook application has got an over-haul. With our new application, you can translate messages and text, and now you can post the
translation to your Wall. We’ve also introduced a live chat application so you can chat and translate the conversation between you and your Facebook Friends.

Our Official FreeTranslation.com Facebook Group is also still growing – join us now and invite your Friends too.

Don’t forget about our tools which give you more translation power directly from your desktop.

SDL Desktop Translator translates whole documents, emails and text all from within Microsoft Word and Outlook.
SDL Chat Translator translates AOL AIM online conversations between you and your buddy.
SDL Clipboard Translator translates effortlessly the contents of your clipboard.
Join our Platinum Club to get more accurate translations and be able to email the translated text.

New SDL Chat Translator launched

2009-03-03T12:05:00.015-05:00

Posted by Helen Liley, eBusiness Manager

We have just launched our new version of SDL Chat Translator for AOL Instant Messenger 6.8. This integrates fully into the AOL Instant Messenger chat tool and provides real time, instant translations as you chat to your buddy online. Chat Translator also translates conversations from your buddy back into your language instantly and displays both languages onscreen at the same time so you can see the full chat.

Chat Translator works with AIM 6.8 which is the latest version of AIM released by AOL and enables you to chat to your buddy in your own language, and instantly translates the conversation into the chosen language of your buddy.
Similarly, it also translates the conversation from your buddy back into your language.

You can translate English into Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, as well as all of these languages translated back into English from within the chat conversation.

We’re also curious about regional versions of chat abbreviations which are commonly used in online chatting, text messaging and emailing. We know that these are used world-wide and there are different ones for different languages and countries.

So, in English, ‘LOL’ means ‘Laugh Out Loud’ and ‘ROTFL’ is ‘Roll On The Floor Laughing’, but 'BTW' (By The Way), what are the ones you use each and every day?

Post your favourite ones to our Blog by hitting the ‘Comment’ link, but don’t forget to say what language they are for, and what they mean. We’ll post them onto the Blog for everyone to see.

Or, let us have your abbreviations by joining our Official FreeTranslation.com Facebook Group. You can also tell us what other tools or services you’d like to see from FreeTranslation.com.

Calling all iPhone users

2009-02-20T10:18:00.021-05:00

Posted by Helen Liley, eBusiness Manager

FreeTranslation.com now offers a web application exclusively for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which is unique in the translation application space. It translates your words into the destination language in real-time - depending on the speed of your active internet connection and how fast you can type of course!

This free translation tool is really handy for business travellers in a foreign country, students needing a quick translation to assist with homework or ex-pats needing to check a quick phrase.

You can translate from English into Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian and Norwegian and back to English.

Simple to Use
Like Apple, FreeTranslation.com believes that technology should be accessible to everybody. The iPhone FreeTranslation application is very easy to use and everyone with an iPhone is able to use it. Simply point your Safari browser on the iPhone to our homepage, and start enjoying the real-time translations that the tool offers. iPhone users will be automatically directed to the iPhone free translation tool when they visit FreeTranslation.com , but will have the option to return to our full site.

Free to all iPhone Users
The FreeTranslation.com iPhone translation tool is free to all iPhone, iPhone 3G and iPod Touch users. The iPhone Web translation tool will be developed further in the future as part of our commitment to providing useful and free translation gadgets and tools to the worldwide community through the FreeTranslation.com web site.

Have a look at our online shop to see the other free and paid gadgets on FreeTranslation.com. Within the shop, you’ll find a free webpage translator to add to your own webpage which translates the content of your webpage, as well as FreeTranslation.com buttons you can add into your Google toolbar. In the shop, you can also join our Platinum Club, subscribe to Desktop Translator, Clipboard Translator, or Chat Translator. Bookmark Chat Translator because we’re re-launching it in the next few weeks!

If you’ve used the iPhone FreeTranslation application, give us your feedback by commenting on this Blog, or join our Official FreeTranslation.com Facebook Group to tell us what you think. You can also tell us what other tools or services you’d like to see from FreeTranslation.com.

FreeTranslation gets romantic

2009-02-06T08:50:00.000-05:00

Posted by Helen Liley, eBusiness Manager

St. Valentine's Day, the most romantic day of the year, is just around the corner. Celebrated on February 14 each year, it is a time for romance and love, with many people giving cards, letters, flowers or presents.

We at FreeTranslation have got together a list of popular romantic Valentine's messages. We have translated them into Italian, French, Spanish (for Spain and for Latin America), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), German, Japanese, and put them onto FreeTranslation.com.

Find out what 'I love you' is in Japanese, 'Love and Kisses' in German or ‘Yours Forever’ is in Spanish, by going to our Valentine's phrases page. And there are lots more too!

You can email any of the romantic phrases to your own Valentine with our compliments. Feel free to use the translated phrases in cards or letters to your loved ones.

Plus, we'd like to know if there are any we've missed, so do take advantage of the opportunity to send us at FreeTranslation some of your own via our Official FreeTranslation.com Facebook group.

We will be adding more topical translations to FreeTranslation.com, so keep checking back for the latest phrases of the moment! Use our new Share button to make it easy to return to FreeTranslation.com.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Free Translation Tool now on Facebook apps!

2008-10-29T11:45:00.005-04:00

Posted by Paul Harris, Group Web Manager SDL

Following the launch and success of our Facebook Official Freetranslation.com fan club we decided to develop a Facebook application. We wanted to help the Facebook community get free translation for things like wall posts and for sending translated messages to friends. So Russell built the Freetranslation.com Application on Facebook . It does exactly what you would expect! It allows you to get use a free translation, directly from facebook. If you are a member of Facebook then add it to your book marks!

To add the Freetranslation Application to your facebook bookmarks.

Go to the application http://apps.facebook.com/freetranslation/
You should see a Add Application to navigation in the bottom left. If not...

Hover over the Settings menu on the top right

Choose Freetranslation tool settings

Choose Bookmark then add Freetranslation tool!

Happy translating!

Join Freetranslation.com on Facebook!

2008-10-29T11:36:00.004-04:00

Posted by Paul Harris, Group Web Manager SDL

Here at Freetranslation.com headquarters, we were wondering how we could spread the word about our website. Our mission is to reach more people who need free translation services.

So we spent a bit of time 'thinking outside the box'. One one of the team members, Tony, mentioned Facebook. Fantastic, we thought! We had a look at Facebook and found six unofficial FreeTranslation.com fan clubs. The groups ranged from the FreeTranslation.com Appreciation Society, and Freetranslation.com is my homeboy, to mi Español tan malo que tengo que utilizar "Freetranslation.com" and FreeTranslation.com is my BFF!.

After finding such support, we decided to set up the official Freetranslation.com fan club on Facebook. We realised that it would be a good way for us to stay in touch with everyone. So, here it is: Official Freetranslation.com. The fan club has only been online for a few weeks, but we already have over 2000 members!! If you are on Facebook, come and join us today!

We're planning to get websites on Myspace and Orkut soon too, so look out for those if you are a member. And if you have any other suggestions for social sites, please let us know!

Harry Potter and the Illegal Translation of Text

2007-06-27T10:29:00.000-04:00

Posted by Jay Marciano, Director, Machine Translation Development

As fans of Hogwarts and the magical world of J. K. Rowling eagerly await the seventh and final installment of the wonderful Harry Potter books, it seems a good time to review the terms and conditions of FreeTranslation.com, particularly as they concern the translation of copyrighted material.

The sanctioned translations of the Potter books are generally published a few months after the original appears in print. The wait, of course, can be excruciating for those who can’t simply tap their copy of the book with their wands and shout “Vernaculum!” or some other translation incantation. In the past, we have noticed that merely days after the publication of a Harry Potter book, the FreeTranslation.com servers are heavily taxed by users who are trying to magically produce unofficial translations of the books.

The terms and conditions of this website clearly state that users must promise SDL that the text or other materials submitted by them to FreeTranslation.com do not infringe upon any third party's copyright.

Please keep in mind that the text of a novel is protected by international copyright law. It is illegal to copy the text of a novel without permission of the copyright holder. It is also illegal to produce a “derivative work” without express permission from the copyright holder. A derivative work is any creative work that is based substantially on another work. Translations are derivative works.

How do we know that people are translating Potter material? We can instruct the FreeTranslation.com servers to create logs of unfound words. An “unfound word” is one that is not recognized by the translation technology. If words like “Hermione” or “Dumbledore” or “Voldemort” appear with great frequency in our logs, we can make an educated guess about the content that is being translated.

So, enjoy your reading! But please respect copyright protection. After all, it is the same law that will protect your interests when you write a great novel!

FreeTranslation.com in the classroom

2007-03-27T13:24:00.000-04:00

Posted by Jay Marciano, Director, Machine Translation Development

A FreeTranslation.com user with the pseudonym Spanish Student raised a thoughtful question about whether it is fair to use FreeTranslation.com for homework. The technology behind FreeTranslation.com is a powerful tool. Tools are generally designed for a specific purpose but can certainly be used for unintended purposes. A hammer, for instance, is designed to drive nails but can be used just as easily to break a vase. Automatic translation is intended as a communication tool, not a language-learning tool. So, the real question here is whether using FreeTranslation.com to complete a homework assignment actually helps you to achieve the intended goal of the assignment.

There are many methods, strategies, and even computer programs for learning languages, but there is no way around the fact that it takes a great deal of hard work to become truly proficient in a new language. I remember all too well that homework can be drudgery, so it is not surprising that students would try to minimize the effort by using a translation website. Ideally, though, your homework assignments are designed by your teacher to help you recognize and use the vocabulary and grammar of the new language. If you are serious about learning a new language, then you have to be serious about the homework. With that in mind, I think that using FreeTranslation.com to avoid spending the time and effort that is necessary to learn a language is indeed cheating. But let’s be clear: you are primarily cheating yourself of the opportunity to learn a skill that can be tremendously beneficial. (End of lecture!)

I whole-heartedly agree with Spanish Student that it is a good idea to discuss the use of FreeTranslation.com with your foreign-language teacher. Your teacher might not see any educational value in FreeTranslation.com. But you might find that he or she has been trying to find interesting ways to use FreeTranslation.com in the classroom.

I have often thought that there must be many ways that FreeTranslation.com could be used constructively by teachers of foreign languages. For instance, your teacher could ask you to compare an automatically generated translation to a professionally produced translation. A discussion of the differences could yield valuable insight into the structure of the language or the use of idiomatic expressions.

Or, your teacher could ask you to write sentences in your own language with specific vocabulary items. You could then run your sentences through FreeTranslation.com and compare the translations of the vocabulary items to the information that you find for those words in a dictionary. In a given sentence, FreeTranslation.com will only provide one translation per word, but a good bilingual dictionary will give you many other possibilities. Can you use the information in the dictionary to create a better translation?

Here’s an idea that really sounds like fun: Who in your class can come up with the longest sentence (in either your native language or your new language) that translates well on FreeTranslation.com?

Have you come up with any creative and educationally constructive uses for FreeTranslation.com? If you have, please let us know! We’d be happy to publish your ideas here.

Bidirectional English/Japanese Translation now on FreeTranslation.com

2006-09-28T12:19:00.000-04:00

Posted by Jay Marciano, Director, Machine Translation Development

We have added support for the translation of text from English to Japanese and from Japanese to English! The technology is used on FreeTranslation.com under license from MTLabs, a leading developer of automated translation software for the Japanese market.

There are three scripts that are used to write Japanese, kanji, hiragana, and katakana. The Japanese-to-English translation module recognizes and translates all of these. Western learners of Japanese, however, often prefer the simplicity of using Roman characters to spell out Japanese words phonetically, which is called rōmaji. Please note that the Japanese-to-English translation module does not recognize this writing system. If you try to translate a Japanese text that is written in rōmaji, it simply will not translate.

Enjoy the new language capabilities of FreeTranslation.com!

SDL Enterprise Translation Server 2006, Service Pack 2

2006-06-28T09:30:00.000-04:00

Posted by Jay Marciano, Director, Machine Translation Development

SDL International has a team of software developers and computational linguists that is continually working on the automatic translation technology. Four times a year, we release an update to SDL Enterprise Translation Server. This week we installed SDL Enterprise Translation Server 2006, Service Pack 2, on the servers that provide translations for FreeTranslation.com.

There are a variety of approaches to automated translation. SDL's technology applies grammatical rules and bilingual dictionaries to render translations. So, each new release of the software has improvements to the rules and the dictionaries.

In this release, we have added substantially to the dictionaries, with particular emphasis on English/Italian, English/Dutch, French/English, and Portuguese/English. Each of those dictionaries has thousands of new words and phrases.

The most noticeable linguistic improvement in the rules for this release is the ability of the system to recognize non-contiguous phrasal verbs in English. These phrasal verbs consist of a main verb and a particle. Here “particle” is defined as an adverb that should be parsed as part of the verb even though it can be separated from the verb by certain grammatical elements. The example sentences show, however, that the meaning of the sentence does not change if the particle and verb are separated.

I wrote down your new telephone number on a piece of paper.
I wrote your new telephone number down on a piece of paper.

Because the placement of the particle does not affect the meaning of the sentence, it should also not affect the translation of the sentence. The new version of SDL Enterprise Translation Server correctly identifies phrases such as “write down”, whether or not the verb and particle are juxtaposed.

We have added approximately 500 of these special phrases to the dictionaries of our most popular language modules. You now know one of the phrases (“write down”). Can you find others?

New hardware in response to increased usage of FreeTranslation.com

2006-06-12T09:54:00.000-04:00

Posted by Jay Marciano, Director, Machine Translation Development

Peak usage of FreeTranslation.com is usually between 8:00 and 10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. At this time of day, FreeTranslation.com receives up to 4,000 requests for translations per minute. Have you ever noticed slower responses during that time? Have you ever received a message that asks you to try again later? If so, then I have good news for you!

I am happy to report that we recently finished the installation one of our biggest hardware upgrades ever. You should notice that translations come back faster than ever before, particularly during peak usage.

Through careful monitoring of the servers, we have been able to track the remarkable growth of traffic on FreeTranslation.com since its inception in 1999. Whenever our monitoring indicates that the level of usage is approaching the maximum capacity of the servers, it is time for some new computers. This investment in new servers ensures that you will continue to get the incredibly fast response that you expect from FreeTranslation.com, even as the number of visitors to the site continues to increase.

Enjoy!

Translating text and web pages using the Google Toolbar

2006-03-24T11:39:00.000-05:00

Posted by Tony Ruscoe, Senior Web Developer

We know that many of our users often need to translate text or web pages while browsing the Internet. We're also aware that copying and pasting text or web addresses to and from FreeTranslation.com can sometimes be a nuisance.

If you're using Windows® 2000/XP and Microsoft® Internet Explorer 6.0, you can now install the latest Google Toolbar Beta and use our new custom buttons to get instant translations of text and web pages from any web site that you are visiting.

Each language direction requires its own custom button. If you already have the Google Toolbar Beta installed, you can simply use the links below to add the buttons that you require. If you don't already have the toolbar installed, clicking these links will prompt you to install it first:

Once installed, you will be able to enjoy the following features:

Web Page Translator

When visiting a web page, simply click the button that corresponds to the language that you wish to translate into:

After clicking the button, you will be taken to a page that shows the original and the translated versions of the web page.

Text Translator

When you highlight text on a web page that you're visiting, the buttons will change (as shown here) allowing you to instantly translate the highlighted text:

Alternatively, when you enter text in the search box, the buttons will change (as shown here) allowing you to instantly translate the entered text:

After clicking the button, you will be taken to a page that shows the original and the translated versions of the text.

If you require support installing or using the Google Toolbar, please visit the Toolbar Help site.

If there are any features or tools that you'd like to see us develop, please let us know.

Writing for Translation, Part 2

2006-02-24T09:39:00.000-05:00

Posted by Jay Marciano, Director, Machine Translation Development

Most of the source languages that are supported by FreeTranslation.com have special characters, such as É, Ç, and Ü. The proper use of these characters is critical to accurate written communication in these languages. In some cases, a missing diacritical mark will simply prevent a word from being recognized by the automatic translation software. But in many other cases, the accent is the only way to distinguish between completely different words or at least different forms of the same word.

For instance, in Spanish, HABLO means “I am talking”, while HABLÓ means “he spoke”. The French word ARRIVÉ is the past participle of the verb ARRIVER (“to arrive”), while ARRIVE is the first person and third person present tense. In German, the word TOCHTER (“daughter”) is singular and the word TÖCHTER is plural (“daughters”). In some cases, the accent is the only difference between two completely different words, such as the Italian word É (“is”) and E (“and”). A little mark can make a very big difference in the clarity of the source text and, therefore, in the quality of the translation.

If you have a language-specific keyboard for one of the source languages that use special characters, then it should be very easy for you to type them. But if you have a standard US or British keyboard, you will have to use one of the following methods.

For the entry of text directly into FreeTranslation.com, you can use the convenient drop-down menus that you will find directly beneath the “Free Text Translator” field and the “Translate Again” field. To type an accented E, for instance, click on the down arrow beside the E and then select the accented character that you need.

Alternatively, you can use key combinations to input special characters. For instance, on a Windows system, you can press the Alt-key and the number pad keys 0233 to enter the character é. For a list of the key combinations for both Windows and Macintosh systems, click here. These codes are a bit awkward, but you don't have to change your system settings to use them.

Finally, you can modify the settings on your computer so that you can use more convenient key combinations for typing accented characters. On Windows systems, you can find out here how to set up the US-International Keyboard Layout. With this configuration, you type a punctuation mark and then a vowel to get an accented character. For instance, typing an apostrophe (’) and then an E, yields É. Mac users can find more information about entering accented characters, here.

If you have developed unusual techniques for improving the translations you get from FreeTranslation.com, we would love to hear about them!

Writing for FreeTranslation.com

2006-02-07T11:37:00.000-05:00

Posted by Jay Marciano, Director, Machine Translation Development

By following a few simple rules, you can improve the quality of the translations that you receive from FreeTranslation.com.

Check your spelling.
Use standard punctuation and capitalization.
Avoid slang.
Avoid unnecessarily long sentences.

When you speak with someone who does not speak your language very well, you naturally adjust the complexity of your speech so that your new acquaintance can understand it better. You speak slower. You pay attention to your pronunciation.

And if you have ever struggled to learn a foreign language, then you are already aware that a seemingly unimportant part of a sentence can be the difference between a reasonable understanding of a sentence and a laughable misinterpretation. Perhaps you didn't hear one or two words clearly. Perhaps you tried to interpret two sentences as just one. Perhaps the speaker used idiomatic expressions that you didn't understand. In any case, you know that short, simple, grammatical sentences are much easier to understand than long, complicated sentences.

The computer program that produces the translations for FreeTranslation.com is analogous to a language learner. Every sentence that you submit for translation has to be interpreted by the program. The clearer the sentence is, the better the program can understand it. For the program, clarity is a matter of recognizing the words and the grammatical structures of a given sentence. If you apply the above-mentioned rules, FreeTranslation.com will have a much better chance of producing a good translation of your writing.

For example, look at the difference that the correct use of an apostrophe can make. In the first example, the word in boldface should be written with an apostrophe. The translations are unintelligible. With the correct form of the verb, however, the sentence is translated very well.

He wont recognize you.
He won't recognize you.

Yes, even in such a simple sentence, a spelling error can make a tremendous difference in the quality of the translation. Under the best conditions, automatic translation can yield silly results. We understand this, and we work continually to improve the technology. But you have a role to play too! If you apply the four rules when you are writing texts for translation, you will get the best possible results from FreeTranslation.com.

History of FreeTranslation.com

2006-01-27T08:26:00.000-05:00

Posted by Jay Marciano, Director, Machine Translation Development

The name "FreeTranslation" was selected to reflect two important characteristics of the web site. The basic service was to be free of charge, and computer-generated translations should be considered loose or "free" translations of the source material.

The launch of FreeTranslation.com was officially announced in a press release on 21 June 1999. In fact, the web site had been running in "stealth mode" for several weeks before the official launch. In the initial day of stealth operation, the web site provided approximately 3,500 translations. I still don't know how those first users found out about the web site! During the entire beta period, which lasted six weeks, we performed on average three translations per minute.

Since those early days, FreeTranslation.com has grown explosively. Barely two months after launch, FreeTranslation.com was included in a list of "The Top 100 Web Sites" by PC Magazine. By December 1999, the web site was providing more than 50,000 translations per day. Within a year, the number of translations had surpassed 100,000. In late 2002, we surpassed one million translations each day. Today we are providing nearly three million translations per day.

Another important date in the history of FreeTranslation.com is 15 February 2001, when SDL International acquired FreeTranslation.com and its primary machine-translation technology, TranscendRT. Since then, SDL has invested heavily in the technology and has made automated translation an important part of its product and service offering. We have continually upgraded the hardware that houses FreeTranslation.com. And of course we have worked hard on improving the quality of the translations.

In 2003 we expanded FreeTranslation.com by offering SDLDesktop Translator, which integrates translation capabilities into Microsoft® Office applications. The year 2004 witnessed the launch of the FreeTranslation Platinum Club, which gives members greater translation flexibility. In December 2005, we introduced SDLClipboard Translator, which allows users to translate any text that they can copy to the Windows® clipboard.

And in January 2006, we started this blog!

Welcome to the FreeTranslation.com Blog!

2006-01-23T08:40:00.000-05:00

Posted by Jay Marciano, Director, Machine Translation Development

SDL International, the corporation behind FreeTranslation.com, is one of the world's leading providers of translation services and technologies. Throughout the company, we are always looking for new ways to fulfill the translation needs of our customers. In the world of providing translation services and technologies to multinational corporations, SDL prides itself on developing long-term relationships with its customers. These relationships are based on communication, the kind of communication that allows SDL to truly understand its customers' needs. Only with such information are we in a position to develop solutions that exceed the customers' expectations for quality and return on investment.

But here at FreeTranslation.com, it's not so easy to communicate effectively with the millions of visitors. We don't have a good unobtrusive method for discussing new developments or for explaining what we can do for you. So, the basic idea behind the FreeTranslation.com Blog is to have a non-intrusive forum for communicating regularly with visitors. We know that our visitors are interested in languages; they're interested in translation; they're interested in communicating with people around the world. We're continually improving the quality of the translations produced by FreeTranslation.com; and we are always looking for ways to improve the various applications and special functionality that we provide to our subscribers. This blog will give us a way to share such information with you. Postings will be written by a number of people who are involved in the development of SDL's translation technologies and in the design and maintenance of FreeTranslation.com. We already have lots of ideas for postings. They include: a history of the web site; tips on how to write to ensure maximum translation quality; insight into how the technology works; and sharing some of the stories about how FreeTranslation.com is used.

And of course we also want to hear from you. For in the end, this web site is here to fulfill your translation needs. The more information we have about your needs, the better we can do exactly that.