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Google Translate changes its translation engine

Google translates us into Japanese
Google has dumped Systran, the company that had been powering much of Google's web-based language translation service. Google had developed its own machine translation skill, but until recently, Google was only using its own technology to translate Arabic, Chinese, and Russian text and web sites. Now Google is using its own engine to translate 25 different language pairs.

Machine translation is an imperfect science. The computer translates most words literally and doesn't do a great job of capturing nuance or proper sentence structure. It doesn't appear that Google Translate is any more accurate today than it was a few weeks ago. But the move should help Google set its service apart from competing offerings from Babel Fish and Microsoft. Both companies' translation services are powered by Systran.

[via Google Operating System]

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Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

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