Window Live Translator Launched by Microsoft

Microsoft recently launched its automatic translation service called Windows Live Translator. This translation site allow users to translate a text limited to 500 words or a web page from English to German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Russian. The Windows Live Translator is quite similar to Google Translate, a free translation service provide by Google Inc. Both Microsoft and Google translation service also include translation of an entire webpage.

Like other translation services Google, AOL, Yahoo and Babel Fish, Microsoft also uses Systran to produce most of the translation. However, Microsoft also offers an option to translate computer-related texts using a machine translation system developed in-house. Microsoft’s translation technology has been used to translate technical materials, including MSDN Library.

Microsoft plans to integrate this translation service into Live search and provide a feature already available in other search engines for a long time. The Windows Live Translator’s interface is quite interesting. The default view on the site shows you the original page and the translation side by side in two vertical frames. If you hover over a sentence in one of the pages, the sentence is highlighted in both pages. If you scroll in one of the pages, the other page performs the same action. The idea is brilliant and those who want to learn new language might find this feature very useful.