Test results for comparison of free online translation tools – update

A commentator on my Blog recently pointed out that my post on universal language translation, and the test results of various online language translators failed to cover Bing (Microsoft) Translator – a huge error on my part?  Well clearly it is an obvious ommission, but I consider my approach to have been solid (I took the top 10 results from Google, but obbiously Google is biased in a big way against Microsoft, but interestingly seemingly less so against Yahoo, whose Babelfish was included in the search results).

In any case, I have repeated my ‘standard’ test on Bing Translator (same test as I applied to the other online translation tools). Did I expect Bing to come in and blow away the competition?  I thought it might at least come near the top of the pile. It didn’t. The results set out below, with further comments.

Where next for language translation? A ‘universal translator’ is probably closer than you think …

I recently posted an article on my blog titled ‘Free online translation websites tested – guess who the winner is …‘, where I commented on the recent developments of free online translation tools, together with some ‘test results’ comparing the translations performed by the first ten translation websites identified by Google search for ‘online translation’.

My research for that article showed that, in particular, a couple of websites, including Yahoo Babel Fish, and Google Translate, are introducing powerful tools to aid not just language translation, but also web search. This made me wonder, ‘Where next for language translation?‘.

Free online translation websites tested – guess who the winner is …

Mashable recently reported on ‘Google Translate Now Talks and Translates in Real-time‘ (16 November 2009). I haven’t used any online translation tools in quite some time (apart from the checking the odd word now and then with LEO.org), but clearly they have developed quite a lot in the last couple of years.

The power of these language translation tools now have made me think, what is the best free translation software currently on the internet?

Test results for comparison of free online translation tools

Attached below are the findings of my comparison of selected free online translation tools, in order that they are listed in a search for ‘online translation’ in Google. See my original article on this topic, here, which comments also on the results below.

An outsider’s perspective of ‘Social Games’ (eg. Zynga’s Mafia Wars, FarmVille, etc.)

Social Games are ‘computer games’ played on the internet, usually via a social networking site (eg, Facebook, mySpace, etc.), which involve interaction with chosen other people (usually nominated friends). In a sense they are a classic example of “Web 2.0″, being the development of the world-wide web to involve greater interaction between online participants.  They have piqued my interest, because a number of my friends are playing them on Facebook, and I really had no idea what they were about.

Companies like Zynga (the maker of some of the largest social games, and who I comment on further below) appear to be quietly growing into powerful market participants, despite mostly being hidden from the public eye (at least so far, most of the social games developers are venture capital funded).

Zynga has an excellent overview, presented by its founders and employees, in this YouTube video:

Ensembli – a solution to information overload?

Ensembli is an interesting website which I think starts to look at ‘search’ in a slightly different way. That said, Ensembli doesn’t really sit alongside Google or Bing – it’s different. In some ways it’s more like an RSS reader, in that it brings stories to you as they become available/published.

IPTV

IPTV (or Internet Protocol Television) should, in my view, be the next major milestone in social habits and consumer choice.  Joost, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, youTube and Vimeo all offer online video (as well as others) but there is still so much potential for media organisations to open up their catalogues of existing material to worldwide audiences and extract value from individual consumer purchases.

Consumers are still generally treated on a regional basis due to media organisations attempts to control their market and resist new entrants (yes, I believe this to be anti-competitive).

Traffic! Already?!

I’ve barely begun to build the site, and I’ve just seen that I’ve already got traffic.  This puts me under some pressure to provide some half/decent content.  I apologize if you arrived and were disappointed to find things like “test” and “Hello world!” (from WordPress), and half completed pages …

More will follow later – first I have to think of a theme.  Furthermore, this blog is not my top priority (in fact it comes quite low down the list after family, work, sleep, …).

Test page for new blog

Here it is.  Test page for a new blog.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!