Try the New Windows Live Translator Widget

Try the New Windows Live Translator Widget — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 07:57:26 GMT

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re: Try the New Windows Live Translator Widget

Jerry — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 05:11:01 GMT

I had hoped this translator widget would work for me. However, in my Blogger blog, my sidebar can handle only widgets of about 91 in width. The code for this does not allow me to adjust its width to my needs.

When added, the right arrow drops to a second line. The down arrow does not appear at all.

If you come up with a narrower version, please email me at myriadcreativeconcepts@yahoo.com.

Thanks and good luck with your work.

re: Try the New Windows Live Translator Widget

Andi — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:53:47 GMT

I tried this from english to german but the translated text is nearly unreadable :) sorry thats no good

re: Try the New Windows Live Translator Widget

Michael — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:33:34 GMT

The text which is translated by Windows Live Translator is not very well to understand. The text which is translated by the human translator is much better. PLEASE TRANSLATE ARTICLES BY A HUMAN TRANSLATOR IN THE FUTURE!!! THANK YOU!

re: Try the New Windows Live Translator Widget

John Martin — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:42:52 GMT

@Andi and Michael: thanks for the candid feedback. We'll keep working on it. I might also try writing my blog posts differently so they are easier for the Live Translator to handle.

re: Try the New Windows Live Translator Widget

Marc — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:39:57 GMT

The widget as such is pretty cool and I'd love to see it on every machine tranlated page. Translations, however, are far away from being intelligible -- sorry to say that. I tried both French and German translations and would not have had a chance to understand anything without the original text (native speaker in both languages). WorldLingo does not much better, btw. @ John: Modifying the writing style may help in the first place, but would this be a good idea on the long run?

re: Try the New Windows Live Translator Widget

John Martin — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:26:05 GMT

@Jerry: Thanks for the feedback, Jerry. I have passed it to the Translator Team, and they tell me the next release should have more flexibility re sizing.

re: Try the New Windows Live Translator Widget

Matthias Melcher — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:50:26 GMT

Machine translations vitiate all the expensive usability efforts. If a text for hundreds of readers is not even read by a single human before publication, this is disrespect towards the readers. Obviously you are trying to save money in the wrong place. In German PowerPoint 2007, the contour is STILL translated as table of contents (both from outline), even after SP1.

re: Try the New Windows Live Translator Widget

Diane Glimp — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:24:55 GMT

Matthias, I don't agree that machine translation is disrespectful to our customers. Machine translation is in its infancy, and it will get better. We are leveraging a new technology that Microsoft Research has built in order to provide more localized content for our customers. The great thing about the widget is that it displays the original English content as well as the machine translated content. That way, if the translation isn't so great, you don't have to use it. But for some customers who have poor English-speaking skills, the translation will be helpful. Right now, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil) and Chinese Simplified have the highest ratings for machine translation. German is a difficult language and will take more "training" of the translation memory database to become more usable. Thanks for trying it out, though! All comments are helpful.

If you can be more specific about the problem with translation in PPT 2007, I can pass your comment along to the product team.

Star Trek and the future of the internet(s) courtesy of Microsoft's translation technology?

Pieces of me on community... — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:30:23 GMT

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a presentation by Genevieve Bell where she talked about

Don't Like My English? Try Me In Portuguese (and Eleven Other Languages) With Windows Live Translator!

Ward Pond's SQL Server blog — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:44:08 GMT

This is the coolest thing I've seen in quite awhile.. Microsoft Server and Tools (the group that brings