[200] in Software_Announce
language translator
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Erik Nygren)
Sat Dec 13 05:21:01 1997
To: software-announce@MIT.EDU
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 1997 05:17:41 EST
From: Erik Nygren <nygren@MIT.EDU>
I'm punting working on my thesis and noticed that AltaVista now has
a translation service running for translating web pages.
I've quickly hacked together a perl script that will issue queries
from the command line. For example:
zocalo:~% add nygren
zocalo:~% translate ef I really should be working on my thesis.
Je vraiment devrais travailler ` ma thhse.
Languages supported include French, Spanish, Italian, German,
and Porteguese. It's kindof useful for reading email people
send you that's written in foreign languages (or I'd guess it may be).
Because it's sometimes gives poor translations, the
"doubletrans" program will translate it forward and back again.
For example:
zocalo:~% doubletrans f Take me to your leader.
Carry me to your starter.
As you can see, you should be wary of trusting the translations. :-)
Note that AltaVista's server sometimes flakes out and returns
blank pages. If so, try again.
Note that this program is TOTALLY UNSUPPORTED. I mean, it's soooo
unsupported that if you use it to translate mail to someone in France
about getting together for coffee and start a world war as a result, I
really don't want to see the bug report. Or if AltaVista changes
their format or becomes displeased with people using their service
this way, I won't make effort to fix the script. (Especially as my
thesis deadline approaches). I've also only tested the script under Linux.
But if someone wants to take over care of it and clean it up
and put it somewhere supported, that would be even cooler.
See http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/ for the web interface,
which can also be pointed at web pages!
Erik
