Latest Blog Posts
17 May 2006 Google Press Day
It was the Google Press Day 2006 last Wednesday. I probably should have blogged about this then.
Anyway, forget about the four new releases, the most exciting part of the webcast was when Sergey Brin (namesake of Google Brin Creator) answered my question about their plans for their statistical machine translation system around 03:32:45 into the webcast.
Anyway, forget about the four new releases, the most exciting part of the webcast was when Sergey Brin (namesake of Google Brin Creator) answered my question about their plans for their statistical machine translation system around 03:32:45 into the webcast.
No real surprises there then. Although it possibly sounds like Google may be waiting for Moore's law to kick in before they integrate their statistical machine translation system with more of their services.Tony Ruscoe asked:
Do Google have any plans in the near future to integrate their statistical machine translation system with services such as Google News, Gmail, Google Talk and even Google Search?
Sergey Brin replied:
We actually – for those of you who haven't heard – we actually developed a statistical machine translation system that won a number of awards last year and came in first on Chinese/English translation as well as Arabic/English translation. And we're very excited about it. We'd certainly love to get that launched into our products, and we're working on it.
It was really developed to be as good as possible in terms of the quality of the translation, not as “productionizable” as possible. So, I know it seems trivial, but it would actually take some work to make that happen. But we're committed to doing it and I believe we will succeed
Also see Google Press Day posts elsewhere:
- Google Press Day 2006 (Matt Cutts)
- Google Press Day 2006 (Google Blogoscoped)
- Google Press Day Q&A (Google Blogoscoped)
Labels: google, personal, translation
23 January 2006 Free Translation Blog Released
Here I am, banging on about Google and their new stuff all the time, whilst forgetting that the company I work for has got a pretty cool tool of our own. (No, I'm not talking about myself; whilst many people might call me a tool, I'm not sure how many would call me cool.)
FreeTranslation.com has been around since 1999. If you're between 13 and 21 years old and living in the USA, you'll probably have used it to translate some insults into a foreign language before emailing them to your friends. (For some reason, most Europeans use another website – but we won't talk about that here!)
Today we quietly released the FreeTranslation.com Blog. There's only one post there at the moment, but there are plenty more to come and they should make quite interesting reading. Some people might think that we're jumping on the blogging bandwagon a few years too late – I think that if you've got something to say, it's better to say it late than never! (Also, trying to justify working on something that isn't going to make you money is always difficult!)
The fact that I'm posting about something work related like this makes me feel like I'm trying to be to FreeTranslation.com what Matt Cutts is to Google or something! As if... (Well, I can dream can't I!?!)
Anyway, if you're interested in translation, add the FreeTranslation.com Blog Feed to your feed reader or aggregator. And if there's anything you'd like to know, post a comment here or there and we'll do our best to answer your questions.
BTW, this was going to be an exclusive post but I thought I'd let Chris have the scoop since he's been so patiently waiting for its release so he could be the first person in the blogosphere to post about it!
FreeTranslation.com has been around since 1999. If you're between 13 and 21 years old and living in the USA, you'll probably have used it to translate some insults into a foreign language before emailing them to your friends. (For some reason, most Europeans use another website – but we won't talk about that here!)
Today we quietly released the FreeTranslation.com Blog. There's only one post there at the moment, but there are plenty more to come and they should make quite interesting reading. Some people might think that we're jumping on the blogging bandwagon a few years too late – I think that if you've got something to say, it's better to say it late than never! (Also, trying to justify working on something that isn't going to make you money is always difficult!)
The fact that I'm posting about something work related like this makes me feel like I'm trying to be to FreeTranslation.com what Matt Cutts is to Google or something! As if... (Well, I can dream can't I!?!)
Anyway, if you're interested in translation, add the FreeTranslation.com Blog Feed to your feed reader or aggregator. And if there's anything you'd like to know, post a comment here or there and we'll do our best to answer your questions.
BTW, this was going to be an exclusive post but I thought I'd let Chris have the scoop since he's been so patiently waiting for its release so he could be the first person in the blogosphere to post about it!
Labels: links, personal, translation
28 November 2005 TalkMan: Talking Global with PSP
Whilst my PSP is absolutely brilliant, I can't help thinking that it must still have loads more to offer than just games, movies and music...
Imagine if I could take my PSP on holiday with me, speak English into it and have it instantly translate what I said into another language and speak it back to me. Well, if I want to translate what I say into Chinese, Korean or Japanese, this review suggests that's not such a crazy idea after all. TalkMan was recently released in Japan and does exactly that. It's bundled with a USB microphone that screws into the top of your PSP and uses speech recognition software to try and find a match for what you've said in its huge list of common phrases. You can even play games to help you with your language learning and pronunciation.
It's not quite a Babel fish, but it's one step closer I guess.
(What else could that USB microphone be used for though? I'm thinking that SingStar for the PSP would certainly keep my fellow tram passengers entertained on the way into work...)
[Via Waxy]
Imagine if I could take my PSP on holiday with me, speak English into it and have it instantly translate what I said into another language and speak it back to me. Well, if I want to translate what I say into Chinese, Korean or Japanese, this review suggests that's not such a crazy idea after all. TalkMan was recently released in Japan and does exactly that. It's bundled with a USB microphone that screws into the top of your PSP and uses speech recognition software to try and find a match for what you've said in its huge list of common phrases. You can even play games to help you with your language learning and pronunciation.
It's not quite a Babel fish, but it's one step closer I guess.
(What else could that USB microphone be used for though? I'm thinking that SingStar for the PSP would certainly keep my fellow tram passengers entertained on the way into work...)
[Via Waxy]
Labels: gadgets, links, personal, psp, translation