Category Archives: Microsoft

What’s the best free machine translation engine?

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Google Translate is the first place I turn for free machine translation (MT), mostly because it supports the greatest number of language pairs. I use Microsoft Translator as well, but usually only when I want to compare engines. I haven’t used Babel Fish in years.

But which engine offers the highest quality translations? I’m assuming Google, but this is only based on anecdotal feedback and personal experience.

Years ago, IBM developed an algorithmic method of measuring MT quality known as the BLEU score. Google scored well here, but the BLEU score is not without its critics.

Translation, like writing itself, is as much an art as it is a science.

Which is why translators are best positioned to judge the quality of machine translation engines. And although even translators are going to disagree as well, if you get enough of them together, perhaps you can begin to draw statistically significant conclusions.

Enter Ethan Shen and his start-up venture Gabble On.

Ethan has set out to recruit a few thousand volunteer translators to compare the three free translation engines. He asked me to help get out the word. He promises that he will publish the results for all to see. He’s also offering a free Apple iPad to one lucky volunteer. I have no financial interest in the project. I’m just curious to see what engine comes out on top.

Here are the details from Ethan:

We are seeking functional to fluent speakers of any two languages to take 5 minutes to judge and submit their opinion in our dynamic comparison engine (until March 29, 2010). At the end of the 6 week voting period, we will be publishing our results publicly in hopes that our research can to contribute meaningfully to the body of knowledge in this field.

In gratitude for your participation, we are awarding one new Apple iPad to a lucky participant. The survey can be found at: www.gabble-on.com/SurveySelector.aspx.

Which engine do you think is best?

Back to Byte Level

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After more than a year at Microsoft, I have decided to return to Byte Level Research.

It was a tough decision to make. I enjoyed working with the many people who are passionate about globalization. And I enjoyed being a part of one of the most global companies on the planet.

But the time was right for me to move on.

I approached Midge Raymond regarding the possibility of returning to Byte Level and, after much negotiation, she extended an offer.

I am now working with Midge on the 2010 Web Globalization Report Card. As Midge noted a few weeks ago, a lot has happened over the past 18 months. You’d think a global recession would have kept web globalization to a minimum, but the data is showing continued growth.

Shortly after the report publishes, I will be making time for consulting projects. If you need someone to evaluate your company’s web site, train your web and marketing teams, or conduct a conference call on web globalization best practices, please contact me at Byte Level.

Just how global is your browser?

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firefox_downloads

Firefox 3.5 is now out and available in more than 70 languages.

Yes, 70 languages.

Naturally, I was curious to learn how many languages the other browsers currently support. Here is a rough list:

I say “rough” because I didn’t verify every language and I might be off by one or two. I was surprised at how few languages Safari supports; 16 languages used to be a lot not that long ago. But not anymore.

And I think it’s safe to say that Firefox is the most global browser on the market today.

If you want to see how popular Firefox is around the world, check out the real-time download map here. The last I checked there were 23 million downloads with 5 million coming from the US, followed by Germany, Japan, and France. I particularly like how you can look up countries by ccTLD.

And on a separate note: If you enjoy watching real-time downloads, here’s another map that I found oddly hypnotizing — Zappos purchases as they happen: www.zappos.com/map/

Bing cuts the clicks

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Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft, so take this with a grain of salt.

Since Bing launched I’ve been thinking a lot about search engines and how I use them.

I’ve got two recent examples that illustrate why I think Bing might be onto something. Bing, for certain scenarios, cuts the clicks you must make to get the information you need — or at least the information I need.

Checking a sports score

I’m a St. Louis Cardinals fan. When I want to get a Cardinals score, I often go to ESPN, but that site loads so slowly and is so busy that I have been going to Bing lately and just entering “Cardinals” in the search window. Here’s what I get:

bing_cardinals

Bing gives me a nice summary of the Cardinals schedule. If there’s a game going on at the moment, I get a real-time sports score, which is nifty. Google, as shown here, only gives me a link to the Cardinals’ site. Another click, instead of a score.

google_cards

Checking on a flight

My wife flew to Oakland recently and I wanted to check on her flight. So I entered the flight number into Google and Bing. Here’s what I found:

bing_southwest

I got the arrival time so I knew when I could call her.

Google gives me a link to another site that will give me the details that Bing already gave me.

google_southwest

Google got to where it is today by prioritizing speed. Austere web design and massive data centers gave its search engine a massive advantage over everything else out there.

But speed isn’t just about how quickly a search page loads, it’s about how quickly you find what you’re looking for. If a search engine knows you’re looking for a sports score and not a sports team web site, it can save you a click and, as a result, save you time.

Time is clicks. You save people time by saving them clicks.

Granted, I’m probably not the most objective observer of the Bing vs. Google debate. So what do you think?

Are these two Bing innovations going to stick?