Google Translate just added a new feature that allows you to easily create a personalized phrasebook with the phrases and sentences you want to memorize and/or find yourself translating repeatedly. As the Google Translate team notes in today’s announcement, the idea here is to allow you to jumpstart the process of committing the translation to memory by “allowing you to save the most useful phrases to you, for easy reference later on, exactly when you need them.”
The new phrasebook is now enabled by default, and you can access it through the little book icon in the top right corner of the Google Translate screen. To save a phrase, simply press the new star icon underneath the translations. The phrasebook itself is pretty straightforward, with one language on the left and the translation on the right. You can filter phrases by language pairs and – just like across the rest of Google Translate – there is a text-to-speech feature that allows you to listen to each phrase. More.
See: TechCrunch
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Germany
Local time: 19:12
German to English
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United Kingdom
Local time: 18:12
French to English
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Very sceptical of their helpful offer....
Local time: 13:12
English to Spanish
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As far as I know, what makes Google translate revolutionary is that instead of translating word for word, as previous machine translation, it translates in phrases. However, the phrases have to be inputted by humans. This is where Google gives you a chance to input your own phrases for "your" benefit.
Netherlands
Local time: 19:12
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Why am I not convinced this is purely altruistic and for the benefit of the users?
I know of no commercial service on the internet that is purely altruistic.
Anyway, having looked at the feature, it looks almost like a renamed history function. In other words, it is aimed at people who usually type the source text manually. So if you have typed a phrase previously, you can save time (and typing) by simply looking it up in your phrasebook. As such it looks like a useful feature.
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:12
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Why am I not convinced this is purely altruistic and for the benefit of the users? As much as I love Google as a search engine, I'm becoming very uneasy about their access to vast amounts of personal information and using it for targeted ads, and who knows what else. It seems to me that this is just another ploy to access peoples' interests and exploit the entered items for their own translation tool and/or marketing schemes. I don't want to discourage others from using it, just be very aware of what the consequences might be.
I won't be availing myself of this "opportunity". Call me suspicious, untrusting, and paranoid if you want to
I'm not going to play that game ! But it does suggest that Google is aware of how hopelessly inadequate Google Translate is and is trying to do something about it (at our expense).
[Edited at 2013-03-16 10:52 GMT]
Netherlands
Local time: 19:12
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
It seems to me that this is just another ploy to access peoples' interests and exploit the entered items for their own translation tool and/or marketing schemes.
This looks to me like a way of stealing my translated phrases...
They're not *your* translated phrases. They are phrases that you had entered into Google Translate and that Google had translated itself. There is no user input of target text.
Germany
Local time: 19:12
German to English
+ ...
I know of no commercial service on the internet that is purely altruistic.
That was not meant entirely seriously, but it can happen that a new feature like that could be classified as a genuine customer service, which is often intended to promote customer loyalty and attract new prospects, but not necessarily as a way of increasing profits directly.
One of my main translation specialties is marketing/market research, and having worked in that industry for some years, I'm fairly familiar with the typical marketing MOs, so I'm not kidding myself about Google's motives. In any event, I'm quite certain the highest priority of practically any company is to make money, right?
Canada
Local time: 13:12
Member (2008)
French to English
+ ...
It seems to me that this is just another ploy to access peoples' interests and exploit the entered items for their own translation tool and/or marketing schemes.
This looks to me like a way of stealing my translated phrases...
They're not *your* translated phrases. They are phrases that you had entered into Google Translate and that Google had translated itself. There is no user input of target text.
In the web version of Google Translate there is the option of entering better translations of bits of the target text. I have always assumed that GT takes note of any changes made to the target text and adds the change into its statistical calculations.
[Edited at 2013-03-18 11:23 GMT]
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:12
Member (2008)
Italian to English
I have always assumed that GT takes note of any changes made to the target text and adds the change into its statistical calculations
Yes - which is why I never do that - on the rare occasions when I use Google Translate.
I wonder if there's a legal issue with Google not making it clear what they do with the text that users put into the Google Translate database?
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