Five Useful Sites for Language Tools and Translation

Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia

Easy, fast and helpful websites to translate a text, a phrase or even a whole web page from one language to another. All for free.

Google Translate

Google has produced and developed its own system of providing us an automatic translation tool from English to 13 other major languages in the world and vice versa including its own text conversion. A total of 25 language pairs available for translation. It has become one of the most go-to sites for free translation services. It provides full-website translation, word/phrases conversion and even translating dictionaries all for free. Plus, you can download the Google toolbar to translate words instantly with no clicks needed.

World Lingo

World Lingo has become one of the most reliable translation services on the web. It has 15 major languages available for translation. They have text translator, document translator, website translator and even e-mail translator. Their free translation services limit users to just about 150 words. If you’re in a business having to communicate to more than 200 languages, you can opt in to subscribe to their more accurate, unlimited words and faster translation for about $5/month.

Babel Fish

Babel Fish web translation service was originally developed by AltaVista but was bought by Overture Services 2003, which was then acquired by Yahoo 2004. Now, the Babel Fish translation service is used by both AltaVista and its parent, Yahoo. It translates pages or text to 12 languages. Both Babel Fish at AltaVista and Yahoo has similar generated translations. The only difference between the 2 is that Yahoo provides users their toolbar to translate easily and automatically which is similar to Google’s toolbar.

Windows Live

Windows Live translator was just recently released last September 2007. It is developed by Microsoft as an addition to their never ending competition with Google and Yahoo. Their translator allows up to 500 words max for translation. One unique feature of Windows Translator Beta is its Bilingual Viewer. When users select a particular page to translate, automatically the Bilingual Viewer allows users to browse the page in parallel supported by highlights and even 4 layouts to choose from. All for free.

Dictionary.com Translator

One of the best translation services on the web. It offers not only 20 language pairs but even the language localization and part of speech. Examples are that of English to Japanese and Korean. You have the option to choose your text/phrase from English to informal or polite/formal Japanese and Korean translations. The Japanese and Korean have many parts of speech which show respect which they call “honorifics”. They use informal style among friends and formal in addressing someone superior than them. For localization, one example is that of French to English. You can choose either American English or British English for translation. The translation service at dictionary.com is really by far one of the most unique and helpful among other services. No need to pay for anything because it’s all for free.