Google Translate: Bringing “Engrish” To Your Search Results
Google’s new translation search engine, which was announced at last week’s Searchology event, is now live. The new cross-language search feature allows users to find and view search results on foreign language pages in their native language.
To use the new service you’ll need to set your language preferences, for example English to French, and then just type your query. Google will translate the query to French and then translate the results back to English.
Regrettably the service isn’t yet available via the Google homepage, but the new translation services are still in beta so it may be a while before Translate gets homepage status.
And because it is a beta and perhaps even moreso because it’s attempting translations, results can be a bit rough — particularly with Asian languages. The service is best for those wanting, as the Google press release puts it, “to obtain a gist of content written in a language that they do not know or know well,” rather than a precise translation of a page.
That said, the results are actually pretty good. A few quick translation searches in French actually returned far less “Engrish” than I had expected.
And of course the main Google homepage still offers the “translate this page” links when returning a non-native language page.
