With the latest build of the Snowglobe SL viewer, the goal of making Second Life a truly international online society which transcends national borders is significantly closer to being realized: Released last week, Snowglobe 1.2.0.2680 comes embedded with a system that automatically translates incoming and outgoing text into multiple languages of your choice. (Above, I'm at the famed Kowloon's Gate, developed by a Tokyo studio, communicating bilingually in Japanese and English.) The translate process happens almost immediately (at least in Japanese).
You can get Snowglobe version 1.2.0.2680 here -- it's still a test release, so user beware. I also had a difficult time installing it over the existing version of Snowglobe already on my laptop, so it took a few restarts before the option in Preferences > Text Chat appeared. Not sure on the quality of translation, so I encourage bilingual to give it a test drive. Hat tip: Robins Hermano.
I'm guessing the translation is being done using some of the work Ferd of Ferd's Free Google Translator (that I think NWN has featured before) has done? Anyone know?
Very cool ... and looking forward to seeing it in the Emerald client, as I expect they'll happily jump onto this if it's not too difficult to integrate.
Posted by: Ran Garrigus | Wednesday, September 09, 2009 at 12:25 PM
Chat translators date back way before Ferd. The first popular translator was "Babbler" by Max Case and has been around forever.
After my last survey there were almost 10 chat translators available. While they all base the actual translation on the (not-for-commercial-use) Google Translate API, they all offer extra functionality and features and provide sometimes significantly better results than the "naked" Google API. Q-Translator for example employs a pre-translation spellcheck and therefore increases the accuracy of the translation.
This extra functionality is what you pay for, and which still gives those translators a head start compared to naked Google API translation.
Posted by: Peter Stindberg | Wednesday, September 09, 2009 at 11:11 PM
Translation services can become expensive. Is Linden Lab investing in any, or are they just using the free ones for private use? This could come back at them with lawsuites if they are considered to be abusing a service that they should be paying for.
Posted by: Dedric Mauriac | Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 10:41 AM
Snowglobes' translator was originally written by a paid contractor in C++, and then integrated by the Snowglobe development team. The license at Google allows this use, provided it is given away for free, and follows other rules. The paid-for translators in Second Life appear to violate the Google T&C. The T&C requires prior permission to be used in a non-web application such as Second Life. My gadget, Ferd's Free Translator, has prior written permission from Google Brand Permissions to use their service, and their name, in-world.
You can pick up a free copy of my scripted translator at Phaze Demesnes, and read about the translator at http://secondlife.mitsi.com. I also put online my LSL script collection and just now, a new database of sim neighbors so you can see who is hogging all your bandwidth of your CPU core. The Secondlife Sim Neighbor Database will find that neighboring sim (up to 8 of them) that are stealing all the bandwidth and script times from you.
Posted by: Ferd Frederix | Monday, December 14, 2009 at 10:34 AM