Scenario 1:

In your summer vacation class there is a girl you want to talk to, very much. She seems to be interested in you too. Unfortunately neither of you want to make the first move. Badly in need of an icebreaker, it then happens; thanks to one of the greatest technologies of our times, the Internet. Through a common friend she invites you to chat with her and provides you with her chat-id. Everything seems fine but there's one problem. She wants the conversation to be only in Spanish as she can hardly speak English. Your fun and luck all seem to vanish in a moment! 

Scenario 2:

Your manager has just asked you to create a French version of a website that you have developed in English for a client in Canada. You are given a very short period to complete your task and you hardly know any French. You have been working hard to earn a reputation at work and now you are throwing up your hands in despair.

But wait! What if I told you that you could have an acceptable chat in Spanish with your new acquaintance all by yourself. What if I told you that you could do so in several other languages besides Spanish. And what if I told you that you could have a website done in French and many other languages in seconds without the aid of any professional translator?

Don't believe me? Read on.

Welcome to the world of language learning on the Internet. Filled with an arsenal of tools today's language learners need to only pick and choose from a variety of useful websites, dictionaries, free lessons, tutorials and software on-line to aid and enhance their study. Studying a foreign language has never been easier. And best of all most of these services are free!

For the two scenarios described above a visit to the following sites will provide a quick and easy solution.

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ or http://babelfish.altavista.com/ 

Both these websites use a technology created by the Alta Vista that helps you translate text in the following languages: English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.  If you own a website you can also add this translation functionality to your site from links on the sites listed above. Both the sites offer similar services.

The solutions to the problems discussed above

For our problem in Scenario1, simply enter text in English that you wish to translate in the Translate a block of text box, choose the appropriate translation from the Select from and to languages drop-down list box (in our case English to Spanish) and click Translate. In seconds BabelFish will translate your text and display your output in a box above the Translate a block of text box. You can enter up to 150 words for translation and that is equivalent to one good e-mail length of words. Following the translation tips provided on the page will result in more accurate translations.

For our second problem in Scenario 2, these sites offer a wonderful solution. Our web developer simply needs to enter the URL or the address of a website to translate into the Translate a web page field, choose the language from the Select from and to languages drop-down list and click Translate and Viola! The entire web page is translated and is displayed in the same window.

These two sites are good for translation from English to several languages. The reverse is also true as long as you can grab content in other languages such as German, French etc and insert them into the text box (copy and paste). However you will not be able to type characters such as "umlauts" for vowels in German or special characters in French and other languages. But not to worry, the Internet has a solution for that too. Check out the following site.

http://www.appliedlanguage.com/free_translation.shtml

Here you will be able to insert any of the special characters and letters associated with the languages that the site supports for translation. This site offers free E-mail and Web page translation too.

Now, how do you know if your text is translating correctly? 1. Wait for the response from your chatting friend or your manager. This can be a good or a bad thing and one that is not recommended. 2. Do a round-trip-translation i.e do a translation of the translated output back to the original text and see if it translates to the original or something amusing or unusual. Chances are that the result may not exactly be the text you input into the box. As long as it translates to the actual meaning of the original text, it is fine. Otherwise you know it is gibberish and therefore useless.

Benefits to the language learner

So how do these translation tools help the language learner? It is here that we also need to take a closer look at these translation tools. Bear in mind that these translations services will not be 100% accurate all the time but it is nevertheless a very good and useful tool for language study. Instant translation, instant dictionary, practicing grammar, translating web pages, newsletters etc. are all possible with these services. You can check for your writing if you are writing e-mail, a letter, short stories, articles etc. However it is best advised that the language learner make use of basic translation and then fine-tune the results.

Bear in mind that these free services are only a tool to help you. They cannot replace your teacher, workbooks, and course-ware. The translator is after all not human. Maybe your chat friend is going to laugh at your writing or your boss may scream. It is advisable to be careful with the words you use for translation. Use simple ones lest it should translate into something weird or unfortunately gibberish.

As a general rule these translators are good for English and European languages but with Asian languages you need to watch the translation results more closely. With improvements in software technologies these translators are gradually getting better but for now be warned and informed that they cannot replace a live human translator and so it pays to check your translation results if your are doing serious work.

Now what if you do not have an Internet connection. Not to worry. Translation software is available but you will have to pay a price. The good news is that Microsoft has already announced its offering of the free Office translator for its popular Office products such as Word and Outlook. Now that should sound sweet to language learners.           

By now you probably have a number of questions. Is there a way to input Japanese, Korean, Chinese or Arabic characters into the translation box? Can I input Arabic characters from right to left as that is the way Arabic is written and if I were to input characters from right to left as in Arabic can I do a backward translation to arrive at the right meaning? Can I spell check my input and also refer dictionaries. The answer to all these questions is an emphatic “Yes”. These will be the discussed in the forthcoming article. So be on the look out for the same.