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Google to offer for-pay Translate API

googlecode.blogspot.com

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Re: Google to offer for-pay Translate API

#3

Post by exch »

I'm glad to see the shit storm did not blow over unnoticed. The translate API is a pretty useful tool and I would happily pay for it. While nothing beats a hand-written translation by a language pro, the automated version is accurate enough for many situations I come across.

Re: Google to offer for-pay Translate API

#5

Post by senko »

This is great news for MyGengo (http://mygengo.com/). They have a free machine translation API which can be upgraded to (paid) human translation by toggling a flag.

Granted, they support a lot less languages, but for the supported ones, MyGengo sounds like a much better option, unless Google manages to improve their translation and beat MyGengo pricing.

The quality of the Google Translate is awesome, considering it's automatic, but still falls short of the human doing the job. Also, it'll be interesting to see what Duolingo (http://duolingo.com/) can do, once it launches.

Re: Google to offer for-pay Translate API

#6

Post by pasbesoin »

Thanks for listening! (I'm assuming some relevant Google folk will be passing by here.)

A personal qualification: I may be unusual, but my personal concern (as opposed to professional needs) is use by tools such as the Firefox Babelfish extension.

At times, I spend significant time in communities speaking any number of languages. Being able to drag-to-translate various items, pretty much instantaneously (and without forcing the entire page through a single translation), makes participation fluid. It also props up my sometimes dormant, if not non-existent, understanding of those languages.

I hope there is room within the new model to support this, at reasonable cost, whether through being simultaneously signed in to a Google account (hopefully with adequate security filtering for the submitted fragments), or other means.

I can't help thinking there's also an educational aspect to similar scenarios. Always good for a little PR!

P.S. As long as I'm asking, how about HTTPS support?

Re: Google to offer for-pay Translate API

#7

Post by jcampbell1 »

senko wrote: post #5

This is great news for MyGengo ( http://mygengo.com/ ). They have a free machine translation API which can be upgraded to (paid) human translation by toggling a flag. Granted, they support a lot less languages, but for the supported ones, MyGengo sounds like a much better option, unless Google manages to improve their translation and beat MyGengo pricing. The quality of the Google Translate is awesome, considering it…

>Granted, they support a lot less languages, but for the supported ones, MyGengo sounds like a much better option, unless Google manages to improve their translation and beat MyGengo pricing.

As far as I know, MyGengo doesn't do in house manchine translations. Am I wrong?

Re: Google to offer for-pay Translate API

#9

Post by senko »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #7
senko wrote: post #5

This is great news for MyGengo ( http://mygengo.com/ ). They have a free machine translation API which can be upgraded to (paid) human translation by toggling a flag. Granted, they support a lot less languages, but for the supported ones, MyGengo sounds like a much better option, unless Google manages to improve their translation and beat MyGengo pricing. The quality of the Google Translate is awesome, considering it…

>Granted, they support a lot less languages, but for the supported ones, MyGengo sounds like a much better option, unless Google manages to improve their translation and beat MyGengo pricing. As far as I know, MyGengo doesn't do in house manchine translations. Am I wrong?

I'm not sure whether they do it in-house or outsource, but they do provide it. From http://mygengo.com/services/api/#benefits page:

You can also get free machine translation through our API - so no need to switch between services. Just pick and choose which of your content you want done by humans, and which by machines. It’s easy and free to start with machine translation, and then upgrade for popular content.

Re: Google to offer for-pay Translate API

#10

Post by sidmitra »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #8
sidmitra wrote: post #4

Interesting, would love to be a fly on the wall at internal discussions at MyGengo

I thought MyGengo was in the business of real translations, not machine translations. How is this relevant?

Yeah but i would assume that they would still have a fairly large, overlapping customer base?

Also see comment above, about machine translation support at mygengo.

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