Monday, December 07, 2009

Google Translator Toolkit Data API

Today, we're excited to announce the release of the Google Translator Toolkit Data API. Translator Toolkit is a powerful but easy-to-use editor that enables translators to bring a human touch to machine translation through translation search, bilingual dictionaries, and custom terminology databases. Using Translator Toolkit, you can translate HTML, Word, AdWords, Wikipedia, and other documents in a WYSIWYG ("what-you-see-is-what-you-get") editor, share them with other users, and download their translations onto your desktop.

Through our new API, you can upload, share, download, and delete your documents, glossaries, and translation memories using the Google Data Protocol. That means that integrating human translation into your translators' workflow just got easier! Here are a few things you can do with the Translator Toolkit API:
  • Automatically connect your content management system (CMS) with Translator Toolkit. You can transform your content into HTML files, protect sections of HTML from translation through the class="notranslate" attribute, upload the HTML files, share the files with your translators, download the translated HTML, and then transform and upload the documents back into your CMS.

  • Automatically connect your file system with Translator Toolkit. You can create a cron job that uploads files into Translator Toolkit, shares the files with your translators, then downloads completed files back to the file system.
For now, the API is available in labs as we rapidly add features based on your feedback. Check out our documentation, where you'll find our Java client library and a developer guide to get you started. Please visit our new developer forum if you have questions.

7 comments:

  1. Interesting concept. Translation memories are a powerful tool. Unlike the sometimes very expensive commercial solutions, open protocols such as gdata allow easy and efficient integration with any system. Having already built one multilingual (six language) China-focused online hotel reservation business and literally today begun designing a re-usable translation integration platform for services run by a leading global mobile video systems provider, I will definitely be looking in to using this API immediately... in short, good job guys! I look forward to seeing these tools develop further.

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  2. It would be really interesting to know the feedback you got from translators using the toolkit so far.
    By the way, Are you using the toolkit to improve your machine translation algorithms?
    I've heard some translators at http://www.tomedes.com are using it

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  3. Is the API something that you can put "off" google's network though? Where are the calls for translation sent? On google's network? Could I create an intranet an use the API on my network? So far, from what Ive seen, the content I need MTed is sent to Google's servers, processed there, and then sent back to us. Along the way, from what I understood, the content remains on google's servers, and can be used to their discretions. This is somewhat of an issue in terms of NDA handling...

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  4. Intresting information!

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  5. I was willing to use the google translator to do a client-side mashup...

    To be precise to create automatically a 2nd translation back to the original language in order to double check the translation...

    Where to start?!

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  6. Translate Toolkit APIs are now with restricted access. Do you have plans to make them available again anytime soon? We're developing a multilanguage blog (human translated), and the toolkit is a great tool for that, I'd really love to integrate it in my projects

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