Tip: How to Setup Shortcuts for Google Translate

Being so bad at Dutch, I do a lot of translation from Dutch to English and vice versa. With so much translation between two specific languages, I find that it pays to create bookmarks that pre-load the languages I want. It's simple to do in Chrome, or any browser.


Here's how:

1. Go to Google Translate (translate.google.com)
2. Set it to the languages you commonly use (e.g., English and Dutch)
3. Leave the textbox blank and click "Translate". 
4. Your URL should have something like "#en|nl|" with the two letter language codes you want at the end of it separated by "pipes" (usually SHIFT+\)
5. Create one bookmark in your browser where the URL is "translate.google.com/#en|nl|" and the other is "translate.google.com/#nl|en|" and name them something like "English to Dutch" or "English->Dutch" etc.
6. For extra credit, you can add it to your "Bookmark Bar" so that it is always accessible

As a heavy user of Google Translate over the past few months, I usually notice when Google introduces new features to translate. Here are a couple more tips and tricks for Translate:


Translate Emails - Turn on message translation inside Gmail. Go to Google Labs (you have to enable Labs if you have not already). This way you can get those Groupon messages from Bogotá and easily translate them from Spanish to English and then jet in for the weekend. Be wary of turning on too many of those Labs things. I think it slows Gmail down.
Alternate Translations -  Point your mouse on the word to figure out what original word or phrase is associated with it (highlighted in yellow). When you get your translation, click on the translated word for alternate possibilities. This gets pretty hairy with long documents

I am, albeit behind, three quarters of the way done with Dutch Rosetta Stone. I'll update on that soon too.

Succes!

Babel Redux

Google Translate is another one of these developments that Google seems to roll-out, for free no less, and no one seems to blink an eye. To me, it is further proof of not being evil. It makes Yahoo babelfish look like some sort of throwback translation algorithm in the eighties. The translations seem very accurate, at least the English translations of the Dutch things I have looked are coherent and require little additional decoding and it is tightly integrated with Chrome.

I had been using this a little since Google introduced it, usually for work assignments to research competitors or learn information posted by partners for marketing purposes. Now that I am living in Holland, it has become critical daily tool. Even one of those things that you wonder how you could live without it.

The translation box "instantly" translates (duh!) the words as you type them and is Google-ized, meaning it is clutter-free. It also will try to auto-detect the language you are typing (very cool). There is a robotic pronunciation which I don't find very helpful, but usually entertaining. You can also copy and paste multiple lines and it will keep it nicely separated (babelfish made it hard to do this before)

Not only does Translate provide a copy and paste box web-page, but in Chrome, it automatically translates pages as you surf them. Once it sees you are translating a lot of pages into a certain language (e.g. Dutch), it automatically starts translating without even asking you. Of course, you can turn it off. Equally helpful is the mouse-overs/tooltips/hovers contain the original text, so that you can see what words it is translating, in case there is confusion or you want to learn the word in the original language.

The browser translation is not perfect by any means. For example, when I am looking at sites in Dutch, like marktplaats.nl (local equivalent of craigslist), it will not translate all of the frames or the picklists, yet. Still, it is a leap above what we had before, and will help homogenize the world, for better or worse.

Aw Snap!

I got this "Aw Snap!" error when I load Google's Chrome browser. I have been running Chrome since it was released. This link had a remedy for the problem. It's possible that something my employeer loaded on my computer that broke it. 

However, I have been having really flaky performance from Chrome at home and at work ever since I installed the "local" email and did the multi-panes of inboxes. It has been a real pain. For the first time, I have been feeling let down by Gmail. I have also noticed a bunch of people switching back to Yahoo mail recently... That could be the power of suggestion though.

Beta and COGS

I had a problem with my Google Calendar this morning that raised an interesting question for me. Google makes its money as an advertising company, offers numerous "free" software services to push ads competing with Microsoft, Adobe, and Yahoo. GOOG often competes with telecom providers like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. The interesting thing is they don't provide the same customer support that all of those companies do at the same level and instead rely on customers to self-support. There was no one to send an email to or ask a question or log a ticket. While they are not normally helpful, Google's competitors do offer these outlets for exception handling like my issue.

Some people would say that this self-support model is emblematic of Web 2.0. That may be true but I like to think I am a little more swift with technology things than most people. I checked the users blogs, faqs, online help, some guy had the same or similar question about 1 month ago and there was no answer either. Otherwise there was no help. Most people would probably breakdown if this happened to them. Or call AT&T like me. At 10 cents a message for most people, there can be a tangible impact those these issues besides lost productivity.

If I had some time I would like to look at the service COGS (cost of goods sold) for each of these companies. Normally, companies like AT&T don't put services costs in the income statement but sometimes companies due place it in their supplementary filings. It would be interesting to see how Google's competitors expense this versus Google. Since so many of Google's consumer services are "beta" they probably get away with very little, for now. Of note, Google Mail is in beta after nearly four years in operation. Brilliant! I am sure their competitors are questioning their extensive CS organizations.

As for the interesting problem this morning, I started getting text messages from Google Calendar for a monthly finance reminder that I have set up. Normally the calendar sends only one message reminder. This morning it send one and continued to do so every 5-6 minutes. I erased the series of events from the calendar in Google and my Blackberry. I deleted my phone number from the mobile setup portion of Google Calendar. I still continued to receive the message every 10 minutes or so from Google. I called AT&T to see if they could block the sender. Apparently you have to buy a "stalker package" from AT&T to block certain for $4.95 per month. It does not pay to be popular sometimes!




Eventually I had to reply to the text message with a "stop" response. The first time I tried it I got a response that my number was not registered. I went back, replace my telephone number, reregistered, than sent the "stop" response again. That seems to have fixed it. All that and it took me about 45 minutes all together. I am sure that helped Google's bottom line.