Google Translation Onebox

Google has a new direct result showing translations, triggered for certain queries. Here are some examples:

[translate Hello into French] - Google offers the translation “allô, bonjour”.

[translate Einkommensteuer] - “Einkommensteuer” is a German word meaning “income tax”. As the target language was omitted, Google translates to English. Instead of the short translation Google finds a longer phrase in its dictionary and presents the English text “their joint assessment for income tax”.

[translate glasses into German] - glasses are an ambiguous term; Google finds two translations but doesn’t use the shortest words in their translation (e.g. they show “Lesebrille” – reading glasses – instead of just “Brille”).

[translate friend into Chinese] - Instead of just showing “朋友”, Google prints the text “与…为友;帮助, (经常遇见的)陌生人” as translation. Similarly, entering

[translate hello into Chinese] results in much more than just the appropriate word.

Quelle: blogoscoped vom 25.08.2008