Google Translate

There were hints late last month that Google was planning on adding new features to Google Translate and today the company announced a new feature for the service called Phrasebook. Rather than having to translate the same words and phrases time and time again, Phrasebook allows users to save a set of translations for quick and easy access. Google explained how the features works:

It’s easy to start using Phrasebook. Simply click the star under the translated text to save the translation in your Phrasebook. To view your Phrasebook, simply click the Phrasebook icon above the upper-right corner of the box containing the translation.

Click any phrase in your Phrasebook to load it back in the translation area. Using the Phrasebook controls, you can filter your phrases by language pair or search for a specific phrase. You can also easily listen to each phrase by hovering over the entry and selecting the text-to-speech icons.

Google could soon be adding more features to Translate as last month hints were discovered that Google is working on an option to select a dialect for certain languages in its text-to-speech feature within Google Translate. There were also additional dictionary features that have yet to be implemented.

Google is updating its Google Translate service with a few new features today. Among the new features is grouped clusters of synonyms for easier viewing, and frequency indicators that mark translations as “common, uncommon, or rare”. Google also explained a new “reverse translations” feature:

Our users often tell us that they check our translations by translating them back into their original language. Reverse translations can distinguish translations of different meanings and reveal subtle differences among similar words. Each translation is now annotated with its most frequent reverse translations.

The new grouped synonyms will initially only be available when translating into English, but Google said more languages will be added soon. Google also described how the frequency indicators will work:
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On the Google Enterprise blog today, General Manager of Enterprise Search Matthew Eichner introduced the latest version of the yellow “Google in a box” search solution for enterprises. GSA 7.0 brings new features nearly 10 years after first introducing the appliance, including: Google-quality search for SharePoint 2010, better smartphone and tablet integration, and refined speed and relevance with assisted navigation and Entity Recognition:

The GSA 7.0 helps you find information stored anywhere in your organization, whether you’re using a desktop, smartphone or tablet. Administrators can easily add content sources from secure storage, cloud services or the public web and social networking sites. GSA 7.0 also provides Google-quality search for SharePoint 2010, making for a more simple and intuitive, all-in-one search experience.

Google described of the other new features in GSA 7.0 including document preview, Google translate, support for more languages, and an improved UI:
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The iPhone is great in many ways, but perhaps one of the best cases is in a medical emergency. KVAL reported a 57-year-old Oregon man was suffering from a diabetic reaction while driving down a local highway. (Video link here.)

When two medical responders came to the scene and tried to assist the man, they ran into quite a language barrier. The man only spoke Chinese, but luckily, one of the responders knew to reach for his iPhone. He fired up Google Translate and was able to speak Chinese with the man to figure out his condition and give him the help he needed.

Cross posted on 9to5Mac.

Two nice-to-haves discovered earlier this week over at the Google Operating System blog. The first deals with using templates in Google Contacts. You can choose between two templates by hitting the More Actions button when creating a new contact: Standard and Business. The latter has added custom fields such as job title, company name, mobile phone and work phone. Hopefully, Google will allow us to edit and create our own templates in the future.

The other feature available in the Google Translate service seeks to tap the crowd-sourced knowledge in order to improve the quality of translations. From now on, you can mark each individual translation as Helpful, Not helpful and Offensive by clicking the Rate Translation button. Also, you can click on the translated word and up pops a menu with alternate translations that you can re-order by holding down the Shift key and drag the words around.

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