Microsoft launchs Windows Live Translator beta

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Microsoft, Beta

Microsoft launchs Windows Live Translator beta

by Brad Linder Sep 9th 2007

The arms race between Microsoft and Google has just gone up another notch with the release of Windows Live Translator. Much like Google's Translate Tool, Windows Live Translator lets you enter a block of text for translation from one language or another, or you can enter a URL to have an entire web page translated. Also like Google, Microsoft's web-based translation tool is powered by Systran.

But the interface is quite different. Enter a URL in Google Translate, choose your language options, and you essentially see a full screen version of the website with the text replaced by a computer's best guess of what each word and phrase means. Windows Live Translator doesn't have a full screen option, but gives you a choice of views:

See each page side by side
See one page on top of the other
See the original page, with each line translated as you hover your mouse over it
See a translated page with the original text of each line displayed as you hover your mouse over it

You have a variety of languages to choose from, including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. But as with any machine based translation, don't expect Windows Live Translator to give you a perfect translation. But it should give you a good idea of how much that Japan-only notebook computer you've had your eye on really costs.

[via Google Operating System]

Tags: google translate, GoogleTranslate, systran, translate, translation, windows live, windows live translator, WindowsLive, WindowsLiveTranslator

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Ednonymous said 3:24PM on 9-09-2007

GEEEEEZZZ!

I guess those idiots in Redmond have never heard of Babelfish?

omicron said 4:39PM on 9-09-2007

I guess those idiots at Google never heard of AltaVista or Lycos either. Since when did it become stupid to release a competing product?

Richard Michie said 7:56AM on 9-11-2007

My own website offers the same service form Systran but you can add translation to your site too. With just a bit of HTML code you site becomes instantly multilingual.

You can get the code here http://www.appliedlanguage.com/trans/free_quick.aspx

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