Google Translate just got a lot better, with a nice, clean new look and several new features. The first thing you'll notice is that you no longer have to click to translate. Translate now works instantly, as you type. If you're trying to translate something into a language with a non-Roman alphabet (like Chinese, for example) Google will also show the phonetic pronunciation underneath the translated characters.

If you're translating into English, you've got an even better option: you can hear an audio pronunciation of the English translation. This feature is awesome, and I'm looking forward to a time when Google inevitably implements it for other languages, too. There's a new feature for English-speakers, too, though: if you type in the phonetic, romanized version of a word from a non-Roman language (Google cheekily gives Fake Steve Jobs' trademark sign-off, "namaste," as an example), Translate will attempt to show the proper characters in the original language.

In exciting, but not unexpected news, Google has has put its name behind the brainchild of three of their in-house genius programmers. But it's not a web app, nor is it an enterprise solution -- it's not even a downloadable tool like their Chrome browser. They've actually gone and invented a new language. It's called Go. (That's their mascot, the Go-Gopher, over on the right.)

Citing difficulties with existing languages and arbitrary restrictions that prevent them from making the Google services as good as they could be... they did the only really sensible thing they could do: they made their own superior language. To put it into simple terms: imagine trying to communicate with grunts and squeals. That's how Google feels with today's languages, and why they've made their own one. It's why we speak English today, rather than Tarzan Talk.

And in true Google style, they've done it right. Go is fast. It's secure. They even go as far as to call it 'fun' on their homepage!

I don't want to bore you with specifications -- they're all there on their site if you're a developer and want to get going immediately (it's open source, of course!) -- but I will tell you that this is big, big news.

We haven't seen a new systems-oriented language for over a decade. Technology has moved on a lot. Heck, Google themselves have pushed the requirements of computer systems. When you're trying to build a system that scales to hundreds of thousands -- or millions -- of servers, it's no surprise that existing languages don't quite hit the spot.

Say they're only squeezing 40% of the max theoretical output from their server farm. If Go could push that utilization up to 60 or 70%... imagine the gains! For them, for us! This is even good news for the environment!

Of course, it's free to download and use, and there are tutorials that are very easy to get started with. There's even a little video showcasing just how fast it is, after the break.

To butcher a quote from Spider-Man: with global power comes global responsibility. Now that Twitter has caught on around the world, it has to start supporting its many, many users who speak languages other than English. Spanish is the latest language to get official support from Twitter, announced in a blog post by Biz Stone. Appropriately, Biz wrote his announcement in Spanish.

In case you didn't study español in high school, here's the gist (Thanks, Google Translator! Thanks, high school Spanish teachers!):

Earlier this month, Twitter invited volunteers to translate the site into more languages. Biz thanks the volunteers who worked on the Spanish translation and explains that you can now change your language in Twitter's settings panel, or on the Twitter.com front page in the bottom right corner. He goes on to recommend some Spanish-speaking users to follow, including celebrities like NBA star Manu Ginobili.


Spanish is Twitter's third language, after English and Japanese.

Every now and then I have the honor of reinstalling Windows on a customer's system in a language other than English - usually French, since I happen to work in Canada.

Trouble is, all my installation media is English which means the resulting OS would sport an English interface. Thankfully, Vistalizator makes switching languages a painless process. Grab the required language pack, fire up Vistalizator, and follow the on-screen instructions. In a short while, you'll be able to reboot your system into the newly-translated shell.

While this was originally a Vista utility, as of the October 17th release Windows 7 is fully supported.

Remember, you don't need Vistalizator if you're running an Ultimate edition - you can just run one of the standalone language packs. As luck would have it, they're also linked on the Vistalizator site for easy download. You'll find them grouped by OS on the download page.

Facebook have always worked to make sure that the service is available in as many languages as possible - from French to Føroyskt, Polish to Pirate, the service is available in 70 languages for the site's worldwide audience. Yesterday, however, the Facebook team have rolled out a Latin localisation of the site to help students, noting that "the experience of studying Latin can frequently seem somewhat far and away".

As someone who studied Latin at school, it's nice to see a often-mocked-as-dead language rise from the ashes and brought to life on Facebook - though, I'll admit I won't be leaving the language as my default setting any time soon.

Having knowledge of more than one language (and to be clear, this is about spoken and written languages, not programming languages) is an increasingly important and valuable skill. The problem is of course, the older we get, the harder it can be to pick up another language.

This is why the Internet is so awesome. It can make the challenge of learning a new language or even picking up a few key phrases much easier and more intuitive.

In that vein, last week, Tokyo-based Cerego launched content creation tools for its open language platform, iKnow! to the public. These tools allow users to create learning modules in 188 languages of study and then collaborate with other users to make corrections, add additional items and discuss the process.

iKnow! isn't just about lists of words and phrases, flash card style. It also leverages the semantic web and lets you "remix" the web. You can add content from Google, Flickr and YouTube to supplement the items you are studying -- a picture from Flickr to represent a term, a video from YouTube to help show something in use -- making the process more engaging. There is also text to speech translation, so you can hear how something sounds and then select the correct context and usage.

There are also courses, although right now they are limited to English and Japanese, that let you study terms. You select what level language you are and what format you want to use and a number of items to study. The web app will then show you words, let you hear them, define them and then move on. After a few words, you will be asked if you "know" a word and you are quizzed and asked to choose what a word means and what it means in the context of a sentence. Very cool stuff.

There's a nondescript little link on the Google front page that might have escaped your notice, even if you search Google every day. If you've ever clicked "language tools," though, you know how many languages Google supports. The relevant one for our Download Like a Pirate Day here at Download Squad is, of course, "pirate."

When you set Google's language to pirate, you can "searrrch," look at some nice "engravin's," or set "me likes an' dislikes." This is all pretty silly, of course, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to point out the language features of Google, which can actually be quite useful. Except for this one day of the year, not too many people still speak pirate, but I hear Chinese, French and Arabic are pretty popular.

Learning a foreign language on your own can be frustrating, but it's much easier if you've got a good coach to help you out. Forvo aims to help out by providing a database of words pronounced in various languages by native speakers.

Forvo is still growing, and currently boasts a user base of about 2,700 contributors and 22 editors. Anyone can register and submit new words they'd like to hear pronounced or add their own pronunciations to existing words. The site makes it easy to learn topical words by tagging submissions in groups like fruit, sport, or bad words (for example).

There are currently 186 different languages supported: everything from English, French, Spanish, and Italian to Gaelic, Hawaiian, and Maori. Obviously, some languages are more active than others (read: we want to learn more Maori words!).

Ever wish that Derek Zoolander had decided to open a night school? Or maybe opened a secondary school, so that once those kids that couldn't read good or do other stuff too well got better at it, they could go on to learn to do other things? What if Zoolander teamed up with the University of Phoenix, and offered online courses?

Your prayers have been answered, sort of. Gramlee is an online service for grammar checking and proofreading (and yes, there are definitely differences between the two). The idea behind Gramlee is fairly simple. You just cut and paste your writing into the Gramlee submission form, supply your email address, and an editor (yes, a live person) will proofread it for you and make revisions.

There's no word on what the Gramlee submission form does with smart quotes, but they do seem to heavily recommend a text editor (like Notepad) for document creation. There's no reason why you couldn't use Word, but we're having a lot of fun imagining editors using some colorful language when they get certain document formats.

To get you hooked, the first hundred words are free. You can buy additional words (up to 2,625) for varying amounts, or email a longer document for a price quote. Turn around time is allegedly about twenty-four hours on most documents.

The disclaimer here is that we didn't submit a piece to Gramlee. The "Examples" page shows some nicely edited pieces, complete with red ink mark ups. It would be endlessly cool if documents were revised with the revisions somehow marked. We fear they aren't marked, and that makes our linguistic spidey-senses tingle. So if you use the service, proofread the proofreaders, please. Even people who write good well make mistakes.

And of course, we needn't tell you that it's really not a good thing to submit your term paper to Gramlee for editing, right? Um. Right?

[Thanks for the tip, Mark!]

Craigslist has just added more languages to its online classifieds service. While there was no official announcement on Craigslit, founder Craig Newmark announced the news on his personal blog.

The added languages include Spanish, French, Italian, and German. Future supported languages might include Basque and Klingon, though the latter has fallen out of everyday usage here on planet Earth.

In case you've been hiding under a rock (and said rock doesn't have an internet connection): Craigslist is a free online classifieds service that serves pretty much every major metropolitan area in the US and abroad.

[via cnewmark]

Some linguists say that most of the time people speaking any language only use about 1000 words. If you believe that, then you might also think that if you learned those 1000 common words, you would have a basic degree of fluency. If the idea of rote memorization and vocabulary building in this manner strikes your fancy, LearnItLists is there to help.

LearnItLists is essentially a web gadget that quizzes/flashcards you with 10 words a day in the language you would like to learn. You sign up for an account, pick your language, add it to your Google homepage (optional), and get busy memorizing. In a hundred days, doing 10 a day, you'll have your 1000 words, and be ready to rock with the best of them. Or close to it. Currently, the gadget supports about 16 languages, with more on the way (such as simplified Chinese).

The interface is clean, easy to use, and is intuitive in the way flash cards and vocab sheets are. So if you have been running from building your linguistic skills, give LearnItLists a look.

[via MakeUseOf]

There was a time when Facebook only came in one flavor: English. Well, no longer; there is now an option under "Languages," which you can get to via "Account," to change Facebook's primary language to Spanish.

Currently, there are about 2.8 million registered Facebook users in Latin America and Spain. Both regions will begin to load the Spanish version of Facebook by default starting on Monday, but users will have the option to change the default language back to English should the change be considered bothersome.

Though critics are weary of Facebook's ability to maintain itself and its large social-networking market-share, the company is now destined to grow internationally. Good luck, Mr. Zuckerberg.

[via Mashable]

Apparently it's foreign language week here at Download Squad, because a few days ago we told you about Mango, an excellent online resource for learning a new language. And today we've discovered LiveMocha, a site that not only lets you learn to speak a new language, but also lets you practice your language skills with other users.

Fortunately you don't have to choose between the services because they're both free. But since there's a social aspect to LiveMocha, we have to warn you that once you sign up, you should expect to receive a bunch of emailed friend requests. This is great if you're looking for folks to practice speaking with, but can be annoying if say, you registered with the site just to check it out for a few minutes.

Like Mango, LiveMocha features a number of easy to follow lessons in several languages. LiveMocha lessons are available in Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, and Spanish. The site features a clean interface with illustrative pictures and easy to understand voices. But what really makes LiveMocha stand out is its social angle.

You can do text chats or have voice and/or video conversations with users who want to practice a language you speak. In other words, if you're an English speaker trying to learn Hindi, you can find someone who speaks Hindi and start a conversation. Or if someone else wants to learn English, they might try you. This is miles ahead of the old fashioned, practice with the person sitting next to you in German 101 method.

Learning to speak a foreign language can be hard work, especially if you don't have someone around to practice speaking and listening with.

Mango is a new online website that makes learning foreign languages a whole lot easier. When you begin a lesson, you will hear a brief conversation, and then you can flip forward and backward through a series of slides at your own pace. Mango does an excellent job of combining audio clips and written text. Want to hear a phrase again? Just click the sound icon. Want to skip ahead, just click the slide advance button.

There are a variety of languages to choose from, including Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarine, Brazillian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, and Spanish. The lessons are almost all geared toward English speakers, but the infrastructure would easily lend itself to adding lessons for native speakers of any language.

You can choose from about 100 lessons for each language, so while Mango might not qualify as an advanced language course, it's a pretty good way to start learning a new language or to brush up on the Spanish you never really learned during high school.

Mango is free while in beta, although you'll need to register for an account. We're not sure whether the ultimate plan is for Mango to become a subscription-based or advertising-supported service, but we're assuming the developers wouldn't have put together this fine resource without a plan to make some money off it one day.

[via Lifehacker]