Comments on: Review of seven Second Life language translators

By: Hank Ramos

Hank Ramos — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:45:49 +0000

The Hank Ramos Universal Translator is now open source. (See the LSL Wiki Script Library) Hopefully this will encourage other translators to open their source or to collaborate together to make a better system with the best that each of our’s has to offer.

By: Hank Ramos

Hank Ramos — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:16:45 +0000

Wow, guess I’m late to the party! Thanks for including my translator in the discussion. It is true, that many of us use the Google back-end for translations because it’s technically easy for LSL scripts (we can process everything in-world) to work with and the translations are pretty good as far as machine translation is.

Just to throw my ideas into the hat: each of the translators are fundamentally the same but differ in their feature set and how they go about presenting translations to the users. The translations themselves are almost identical, though I know the Q Translator does some extra processing to look for typos and such.

My focus is to create a translator that you simply…
1. Wear.
2. Have nothing to configure.
3. Simply forget that it is there.

To that end, my interface design is designed to automatically detect people’s languages, handle all the basic translation stuff with Google Translate, and then intelligently route translations to those that need them without upsetting people by spamming them with unnecessary languages dumped into public chat that they don’t understand. My rule is that if you don’t speak a language, you shouldn’t see translations into that language. You should only see translations into your language.

From a technical perspective, I am able to get around the HTTP requests rules not by cheating or “code hacks”, but by building a sub-system into the translator that allows copies of the translator (worn by others or rezzed on the ground) to work TOGETHER. Rather than having translators working idependently in the same physical space, there is a sophisticated, hidden, and encrypted back-channel that nearby translators employ when they notice another one or a group of translators. One translator is elected the master, and then works to handle the workload of translations and spread the work. When one of the translators leaves, the back-channel network of translators automatically compensates and regroups. All of this transparent to the user.

I think I have achieved this goal of ease-of-use (for newbies and non-technical people), transparency, and speed.

By: Valentino Magnifico

Valentino Magnifico — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:49:22 +0000

Does anyone make a translator that will work in IM. Sometimes people get angry when using a translator in local chat. Thank you

By: Donno

Donno — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:59:48 +0000

To: Lalwende Leakey: on 4/3/09 you said “On the other side translators like Ferd, Hank Ramos gives translation to others through instant messages.” I have tried both
translators and can’t figure out how to make them work in IMs. Any suggestions? Thanks

By: Robbi

Robbi — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:32:32 +0000

You mention problems with some of the translators hud positions. I just wanted to bring to your attention that just like prim clothing and other attachments in SL, all items attached to the hud are positionable. SL remembers the offset from the attach point just as it does for a sword in your hand or a belt on your waist. So screen position of the hud is not an issue.
For example, you may attach something to the center position of your screen and then move it to the upper right corner via the edit menu. Or you may find that an object attached to the lower right corner of your screen is down to far. Just edit it and move it up as much as needed.
Screen resolution plays a part in this as well. Someone developing a hud in one resolution may position it just right for his screen while that same offset on your lower resolution may cause it to be partially (or even completely) off screen.
If an attached object does happen to be completely off screen, you can still get it back into viewing range. You can either attach it to a different location and then move it around via edit mode and retry. Or, while in edit mode, scrolling the mouse wheel will cause a copy of your viewing window to shrink down, allowing you to see all items attached to your screen, even ones that happened to end up far outside your viewing range for whatever reason.
Sorry for the longwinded comment but as you can see, location of items onscreen is no cause for concern.
Thank you for your reviews also
Robbi

By: Awaken Yoshikawa

Awaken Yoshikawa — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:07:19 +0000

From my understanding all translators use the google website for the translation, so the accuracy will be pretty close in most of them. Translators are literal, they cannot take into account emotions implied, double meanings and of course will make some mistakes when a language has 10 ways to say hello.

But they are useful for communicating and meeting new friends from all over the world. Nothing is perfect

By: miyuki

miyuki — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:33:17 +0000

Any recommendations for (un)translating other people’s chat?
There’s de-babbler but I always had problems with it.

By: Crim Mip

Crim Mip — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:15:10 +0000

While this review was helpful as far as it went, I’m a lot more interested in accuracy of the translation. I’m far more interested in something that can give an understandable translation than in how it’s HUD shows up.

By: Archie Lukas

Archie Lukas — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:30:39 +0000

I’ve found Simbolic 2.0

to be effective and usable and only one so far that can make me understood in Japanese !!!!!

Archie

By: Gwyneth Llewelyn

Gwyneth Llewelyn — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:28:41 +0000

Awww my own fabulous translation tools were never reviewed?

I’m just joking, of course, I’m not seriously in the business And from the above discussions, I should really, really keep away from them. Whew! The last thing I’d need is getting drama from ‘competitors’.