No, Matt’s site hasn’t been hacked—for illustrative purposes only!
Improvements to Google TranslateWe develop automatic translation tools because we want to help people find information, no matter what language they speak. This week we made three distinct improvements to Translate. First, we added the ability to see
alternative translations, which can help you understand the true intended meaning of the phrase, and provide another kind of feedback for us to improve our translation systems. We also added
virtual keyboards, because it can be extremely difficult to type some of the 57 languages supported by Google Translate on a standard QWERTY keyboard. Finally, we
added speech synthesis for three more languages and dramatically improved another 17, so you can not only see text translations, but actually hear them spoken aloud.
With alternative translations, you can click to see different possible translations for the same word.
This week in searchesAfter our special edition of the Google Beat last week for our
annual Zeitgeist, we’re back with the final
Google Beat of the year. Check out the video to find out which celebrities, football stadiums and Senate bills were popular this week.
During the next couple weeks many of us on the search team will be taking a much needed break after
a very busy year. While we’ll certainly spend some of our time off daydreaming about how we can make search more interactive in 2011, we plan to enjoy our time interacting with friends and family around the dinner table, the fireplace, the ski slope—or wherever the holiday season takes us.
Until next year, happy holidays!
Posted by Mike Cassidy, Director of Product Management
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