Google Translator Toolkit, which is an excellent collaborative translation aid now sports an all new GTalk based chat of the same kind that you have in Gmail.
For those aren’t aware of this nifty add-on to Google Translate, the Translator Toolkit is collaborative workspace where can translate documents (along with your teammates) through a split pane display. Translation jobs can be saved and resumed on demand.
The translation source can be an uploaded document (in a Google Docs supported format), a link to a web-page, a Wikipedia article or a Knol link. Once the document has been processed a rough translation of the same appears beside it in language of your choice. This is the point where all similarities with the mother application (Google Translate) stops and the Toolkit with all it’s collaboration features takes over.
Active translation jobs can be shared by inviting others the same way it’s done in Google Docs. Apart from that one can also refer to translated blocks saved earlier on or take help of a glossary (that builds up over time) & a dictionary (that suggests alternative translations). Moreover, whenever you enter a more accurate translation in place of a machine based sentence, word or phrase, the same is stored in blocks named Translation Memory or TM. Future jobs draw information from the TMs to provide you dead-accurate translations for repetitive phrases.
For example, if you’re translating the word cancer into Chinese, you will find alternate translations for cancer as a disease and cancer as a quickly-spreading danger so you can find just the right word for your translation:
The addition of the chat feature makes all contacts who can help with with the task available to your in real time – thus expediting the process of translation immensely.
At my workplace, we’ve in the process of translating our entire website into several different languages – and I can foresee what an invaluable aid this will prove to be.
Have you tried the Translator Toolkit yet? What is your opinion?
Via: Official Google Blog
