ResourceBlog Article: Science: Databases: New Beta from WorldWideScience.org Offers Real-Time Translation of Content; Powered by Microsoft

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Friday, 11th June 2010

Science: Databases: New Beta from WorldWideScience.org Offers Real-Time Translation of Content; Powered by Microsoft

A very interesting and potentially extremely exciting development follows.

From the Announcement:

Now you can find non-English scientific literature from databases in China, Russia, France, and several Latin American countries and have your search results translated into one of nine languages. With the beta launch today of Multilingual WorldWideScience.org, real-time searching and translation of globally-dispersed collections of scientific literature is possible. This new capability is the result of an international public-private partnership between the WorldWideScience.org Alliance and Microsoft Research, whose translation technology has been paired with the federated searching technology of Deep Web Technologies.

What Languages are Available?

While a large share of scientific literature is published in English, vast quantities of high-quality science are recorded in languages where the research is performed, and the pace of non-English scientific publishing is increasing. Multilingual WorldWideScience.org (Beta) will benefit the English-speaking science community, enabling searching and translation of non-English sources. It will also benefit native speakers of other major languages (Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian) by translating search results into the user's language of choice. More languages will be added in the coming months.

To use:

1) Select a language you would like to translate your results into

2) Run your search in English

3) Review results and select the ones you want to translate

4) Now, below the search area at the top of the page, on the right of the blue box look for a purple button that says "translate results"
in the language you selected

The major question in our mind what kind of quality the mechanical translations provide with technical, scientific literature. In science (any discipline for that matter) you can't rely (most of the time) on mechanical translations being accurate, far from it. We would think translating technical, science language would be an even greater challenge to send back usable, quality results. We would love to hear what speakers who are fluent in the languages that WorldWideScience offers have to say about the quality of the translations. So, it is a very neat idea but be careful. On top of all that, don't forget it's a brand new beta.

Notes:

1) The multilingual version of WorldWideScience has its own interface at: http://worldwidescience.org/multilingual/

2) To Access Microsoft Translate for Other Content, Head to: http://www.microsofttranslator.com/

3) A Second News Release is Available. This One Comes From the British Library.

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