Microsoft Offers Free Online Translation Services ~ Newb Tech

Microsoft Offers Free Online Translation Services

Microsoft Translator is a free translation service to allow you as the user to get the most out of on the fly translation of web pages and excerpts and provides tools to users and webmasters alike to deliver these types of services to the web user.

It is API based and there are several applications that use this API that would be useful to both webmasters as well as developers in addition to IE8 users.

Today, we’ll look at 4 ways to use Microsoft Translation services:

1. Translation Accelerator for Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0
2. Translation Bot for Windows Live Messenger
3. Windows Live Toolbar Translator Button
4. Webmaster uses for Microsoft Translator (via Widgets)

1. Translation Accelerator for IE8

With the release of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0, there is a built in accelerator to translate languages on the fly. First brought out with IE8.0 Beta 2, it allows the user to highlight any selected text and translate to various languages immediately.

It is as easy as highlighting a section of text in IE8, and clicking on the little blue arrow that brings up a context window. At this point you have two options:

1. If you hover your mouse over “Translate with Live Search”, another window will pop up with choices to translate from and to different languages.

2. Clicking on the “Translate with Live Search” will actually take you to the microsofttranslator.com site (opens in a new window) with the text pasted in and ready for you to translate.

That’s excellent for translating quick blocks of text on the fly (rather than the whole page).

2. Translation Bot for Windows Live Messenger

If you add mtbot@hotmail.com to your Windows Live Messenger contacts, you can call the translation service on the fly via your messenger client. This is a robot translator that you can converse with and you can type “Tbot ?” to get a list of commands that it understands.

The first thing to do is to set up your language preferences. To do this type “TBot Change”. You will be led through a couple of menu choices to choose your source and target languages. Once set up, feel free to converse with the bot as if you are talking to another human, and everything you say will be translated and returned accordingly.

Really easy to use once you get used to the interface and an excellent use of the translator API’s. You can go to the Bot’s Live Space in the Relevant Links below for additional information.

Hint: You can add this user to any chat client that can understand MSN contacts (such as Pidgin for Linux!)

3. Windows Live Toolbar Translator Button

If you use the Windows Live Toolbar, you can easily incorporate online translation by adding the Translation Button to the toolbar. This is achieved by clicking the “+” icon in the toolbar and following the menu to add the Translator button.

You will be taken to the Live Gallery where you can Download and install the button.

Clicking on the Add button will download and add the button to your toolbar automatically. Now, whenever you are at a webpage that you need translating, simply hit the button on the toolbar and a new window will appear with the original and translated text.

When you mouse over any sentence in the original webpage, it even highlights the translated sentence in the translated page view. This is excellent for pinpointing which sentences go where.

If you don’t like the side by side view, you can click on the various view options on the top left to change to a top/bottom or a hover type navigation (where you can be on the original or translated page and hovering over the sentences shows a tooltip with the appropriate translation in it.

4. For Webmasters

Microsoft Translator Services have two services for Webmasters. You can add a Microsoft Translator easily into your website by including a quick line of code in your website code

This puts a small drop down into your page and allows the users to quickly select a language and translating the page. Hitting the arrow will take the user to a similar full page translation as above.

In addition, there is now a Widget available that allows on the fly translation without having to go through to a separate page. This increases user experience significantly. To get the widget code, you will need to get an invite from here: (http://www.microsofttranslator.com/Widget/)

I’m in the process of getting that widget installed on newbtech.

In Conclusion

Microsoft Translation services are good and easy to use. They provide value to both users as well as website authors and provide a better user experience overall. The Microsoft Team behind Translation Services have done a splendid job in expanding our capabilities to view information on the web that may have been otherwise hidden behind a language we may not understand.