INTERNET TRANSLATION TECHNOLOGY

[Jeffrey Shaw]

>Date: Wed, 24 Dec 97 10:47:02 GMT
>From: "K.R.Hata" <hatak at who.ch>
>To: "tdr-scientists list" <tdr-scientists at who.ch>
>Subject: INTERNET TRANSLATION TECHNOLOGY
>Sender: owner-tdr-scientists at sun1.who.ch
>Precedence: bulk
>
>                        Season's Greetings!
>                             1.1.1998
>                         Bob Hata/TDR/WHO
>
>--- FYI ---
>
>source: http://node.on.ca/networking/issues/volume1-15.html#AltaVista
>
>DIGITAL LAUNCHES INTERNET TRANSLATION TECHNOLOGY
>
>Digital Equipment Corporation announced on December 9 that it had
>"broken the Internet language barrier with the first European language
>translation service for Web content". Digital partnered with SYSTRAN
>Corporation, a "pioneer of automatic language translation technology" to
>create the AltaVista Web Translation Service at
>
>        http://altavista.digital.com/
>
>The new service allows AltaVista users
>to quickly translate the mostly English content on the World Wide Web
>into French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish -- and vice versa.
>Translated Web pages retain their original formatting and graphics --
>only the language of the text changes. After a user has performed a
>search, each document in the set of results has a "Translate" hotlink at
>the end of its description; clicking on the hotlink will summon a
>dialogue box with the URL of the selected document and a choice of
>language for translation. Translated results are speedy and, although
>far from perfect, are reasonably accurate and complete. Users can also
>skip the search and have a particular Web page translated by going
>directly to
>
>        http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/translate?
>
>and entering the URL and selecting the desired language.
>
>---
>[Bob Hata's comment:]
>
>                It works! Worth bookmarking... and test it.
>
>                You can also type a text directly into the box,
>                and have it translated. I typed in:
>
>                It's terrific!
>
>                [French translation came back:]
>
>                C'est terrible!
>
>                
>