Thanks to my flash drive accessory, I can literally carry a computer in my pocket. Among a lot of other portable software, a dictionary is a key weapon for my job as a writer.

The great thing about a dictionary is that you can have too many of them and still require more. Just like the hardcover versions, each digital dictionary has its own nuance.

Lingoes is a free dictionary application and a multi-language translator which caters to over 60 languages. But with my penchant for the portable versions, we will take a look at Portable Lingoes. Both are essentially two faces of the same software. With the portable version you don’t have to install anything and can run it straight off its folder on your pen drive.

Lingoes starts its life as a 5.3MB download. And here’s how it looks when you first crank it up with a word.

Wait! Wasn’t this just a dictionary and a free language translator? Principally yes, but there are quite a few, other useful nuggets tucked away inside the program. Let’s take it feature by feature from here on.

The Dictionary – Both Online and Offline

Get the meaning of the word from a number of pre-installed resources like Google Dictionary, Essential English Dictionary, WordNet Online, Spelling Suggestion and Google Web Definition. You have access to a lot of renowned and popular dictionary packs which can be installed for free.

The top of the line dictionary downloads includes dictionaries and thesauruses from Longman, Collins, Merriam-Webster and Macmillan. That’s just one shelf of choices from the many that are on offer inclusive of dictionaries in over 60 languages. All dictionaries can be managed from a single interface.

Please note that the sizes of these dictionary packs are considerable from a few to double digit MBs. So make some space for them on your flash drive.

The cursor translator can be configured from the settings. It allows you to lookup the meaning or translation on any webpage or Windows on the click of a mouse over the word.

Wikipedia – One Touch Access to Over 3,500,000 articles

This is one resource that you should always make space for. The English version of the online knowledge bank tops at 257.48 MB of download. Heavy but worth each MB it gulps up.

Free Language Translator – Get Over 44 Lingos

Lingoes uses a cursor translator (select a word or a sentence with the cursor) to cross translate in 23 languages. You can set your native language in the settings and Lingoes decodes foreign words into it. The translation service can be selected from a dropdown and the choices are aplenty.

Configure the hotkeys for productivity and you won’t have to halt in your tracks for the translations. I tried it out with my native tongue and the results were pretty close and understandable.

Speaking Sam

Lingoes uses the default Windows installed Microsoft Sam to voice text. It also offers real time word pronunciation while selecting or looking up the word. If you further want to enhance the voiceovers, Lingoes makes it easy to download and install a Natural Voice Packages from Longman and Webster.

A how-to on how to build your own voice package is also given.

Extra Nuggets – The Appendices

Unlike the human one, you won’t throw this away. The Appendices are a useful subset of tools helping you with things like currency conversion, time zone calculations, International Dialing Codes and weights/measures converter. Many others are downloadable from the website. To expand the mix, there are a few games also on offer.

After downloading it, I am still playing around with it. As a dictionary it is a very good alternative to the ever popular WordWeb. Lingoes offers a lot of expandable options. Connected to the internet, it becomes a powerful interface for clearing away my wordy cobwebs. But even without the net, it offers a lot more that belies its freeware tag. For instance, with the kind of space today’s thumb drives offer, I can download and install the weighty Wikipedia file and use it for offline lookups.

Lingoes (v2.6.2) ’speaks fluently’ with Win 2000/XP/2003/Vista/7 + IE6 or later.

Let us know how do you like the sound of Lingoes. If you like your words and the meanings behind them, I am betting you should like the little green parrot.

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• Top 4 Online Translation Services (38)
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• What Language Is This? 5 Tools to Identify Unknown Languages (22)
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What language is this? Chinese? Japanese?

It’s Korean actually. Detecting this manually would have taken me a lot of time. Fortunately, I found some very accurate tools that can do this automatically. They are all listed below.

The experiment: I tested the websites using sample text (1-2 sentences with 8 words) from the following languages: Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Vietnamese, Italian, Turkish, Polish, Ukrainian, Azerbaijani, Slovenian, Macedonian, Dutch, Filipino (Tagalog), Greek, Galician, Czech, Belorussian, Finnish, Tatar and Norwegian.

Overall, I tested 20 different languages.

3 Tools to Detect Unknown Language Text

1. LangId (passed 18 out of 20 tests, didn’t pass Tatar and Belorussian)

Pros: Overall, great online tool. It offers basic text detection functionality and they also have Twitter and email-detection bots for even quicker results.

Cons: Their engine is based on Google API but they seem to have better results than the Google detector described below. It seems they know how to utilize things very well. I didn’t like that they don’t have their own unique algorithm to detect languages.

2. Google Language Detector (passed 17 out of 20 tests, didn’t pass Portuguese, Taglog and Belorussian)

Pros: Google has one of the world’s best API for language detection. They good thing is you’re able to see the probability of the result they display being true. They were able to pass most of the sample tests.

Cons: I was quite surprised they didn’t pass the Portuguese test. It seems they have a (I hope temporary) bug with this language. Also they can surely do a better job in making the page design better.

3. What Language Is This (passed 11 out of 20 tests, didn’t pass Russian, Korean, Ukrainian, Azerbaijani, Macedonian, Tagalog, Greek, Galician and Tatar)

Pros: Some languages like the South Slavic ones (Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian) are quite similar. In case you enter some Croatian text, let’s say, this website will tell you that the text could also be Serbian or Slovenian.

Cons: They need to work on making their detection system more sophisticated. I was thinking of putting Translated.net (another website for language detection) instead of this one, but Translated promised detection of more languages and actually did worse than WhatLanguageIsThis.com.

2 Tools To Detect Websites In Unknown Languages

4. Google Translate with Detect Language as the first option

Passed: 18 out of 20, didn’t pass Belorussian and Tatar.

Pros: This tool does its job very well. The thing I like about Google Translate is that if it doesn’t support a specific language it gives you the following screen:

That’s a great language detector if you ask me!

5. Microsoft Bing Translator with Auto-Detect as the first option.

Passed: 8 out of 20, didn’t pass Dutch, Vietnamese, Turkish, Ukrainian, Azerbaijani, Slovenian, Macedonian, Tagalog, Greek, Galician, Czech and Belorussian

Pros: It supports a limited number of languages. For those languages, it does its job well.

Cons: I am very disappointed with Microsoft. They have a very limited number of languages for detection& translation and their Auto-Detect feature is terrible. In case you enter a language they don’t support, you’ll get a wrong result instead of telling you they don’t support that language.

Thoughts

Overall, my opinion is the above tools are heading in a good direction. They are currently the best ones for detecting languages online and do their job pretty well when it comes to popular languages. However, they must work on adding more obscure languages (none of the tools were able to recognize Tatar) and I’m sure that all of them, especially Google will go in that direction in near future.

Image credit: Kanko*

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• 3 Tips for Quick and Free Translation Between Languages (9)
• Translation For MSN: Auto Translates Messages While Chatting (17)
• Top 4 Online Translation Services (38)
• Lingoes – A Portable Dictionary and Multi-Language Translator in Your Pocket (10)
• Identify Language of Text with Polyglot 3000 (18)

[To use the bookmarklets, simply add them to your bookmarks bar. Right click them and choose "Bookmark This Link" or just drag and drop it to the bookmarks bar]

1. Subscribe to a website with Google Reader

Add or drag to your bookmarks bar ——> Subscribe

Here is a known scenario – you visit a cool blog and want to subscribe to it. Now you need to find and click its RSS icon, get to the Feedburner site, choose ‘Google Reader’ as your RSS reader, get to the ‘Add to Google’ page and choose ‘Add to Google Reader’. Easy, right? Well, why not make the process much easier – use the ‘Subscribe’ bookmarklet. Just click it, and you’ll immediately get into Google reader, one click away from subscribing to the site. Life’s good, isn’t it?

2. Speed read online content

Add or drag to your bookmarks bar ——> ZAP read

The ZAP reader bookmarklet opens a new window where it flashes text at high speed (text which you  previously marked in a website). Not only that it makes you read much faster, but it also improves your speed reading abilities (I can personally testify).

It’s a good idea to use a speed that you can read relatively easily when the text is important and you have to completely understand it. Use higher speed when the text is of less importance, in order to gradually increase your reading speed.

3. Tweet a link and monitor it

Add or drag to your bookmarks bar ——> Bit.ly

The Bit.ly bookmarklet is the most useful way I know to share links through Twitter. The bookmarklet pops-up a sidebar within the site you are in, shortens its URL and lets you tweet it without leaving the page. Moreover, it tells you how many people have got to the site through a Bit.ly shortened URL and how many got there through your link.

If you think about it, Bit.ly lets you measure the effectiveness of your tweets. By telling you how many people you’ve reached, you can know if people are reading your tweets and what is the content they like the most. I make sure to check out my Bit.ly stats once in a while to better understand what are my best tweets and how I can reach more people.

4. Share sites via email

Add or drag to your bookmarks bar ——> Email this

If you feel like sending a website via email rather then tweeting it – ‘Email this’ is the bookmarklet that I recommend. ‘Email this’ opens a new email in your default email client (including web based ones) with the site’s title as the subject and the link to the page in the body. All that is left for you to do is add recipients and click send.

‘Email this’ is suitable for work settings, where you would usually share content via email. It’s also better to use it when you need more then 140 characters or you just don’t want to share something publicly.

5. Read any language

Add or drag to your bookmarks bar  ——> Translate
‘Translate’ uses “Google Translate” to display the content of the page in English. More or less, it means you can instantly read sites in any language. Really useful

If you think that there is enough content in English – try to think of situations where local content is better. For example, if you’re going on a trip to another country – reading about it on local websites will get you better results. That is where this bookmarklet will come in handy.

Don’t forget to check out the other bookmarklets that MakeUseOf has written about! What are your top productivity bookmarklets? Share them with us in the comments!

Image credit: vramak

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Most free translation tools available for such translations are scarce, not quite accurate and generally have a price tag attached to them. There are some great, free options nevertheless. Karl reviewed Polyglot 3000 and found it quite awesome. Maria found 4 great online translation tools. Plus some more translation tools were profiled on MakeUseOf Directory.

I’m here to show you 3 more free translation tools that you can use to get the job done easily.

Google Translate

Google Translate dominates them all. It’s free, it supports auto-detection and it many different languages. Earlier, we had to use different workarounds to get Google to translate the documents or copy and paste the text into the tiny Google Translate Box, however Google just made it a hell of a lot easier to translate your documents into other languages.

All you have to do is browse here, upload the document to you want to translate, choose the languages (or let it detect automatically) and hit translate. Boom, you have the results, right there in the language you understand.

There are certain caveats:

Microsoft Office

If you have Microsoft Office then you can use the built-in translate option to do the translations for you. While this cannot be termed as free, if you already have Microsoft Office you don’t need to pay anything else. Office 2007 users can find the option to translate under the Review Tab. Hitting translate displays the translated text. Office 2003 users can also translate the text via the Tools > Research > Translate option.

OpenOffice Free Translation Tool

On the other hand, if you happen to use OpenOffice, you should install the excellent Writer’s tools extension. Apart from translation, the extension also offers a truckload of other features. Note that Writer’s tools uses Google Translate to give you the desired results.

Which one is the best? I prefer visiting Google Translate. A lot of other tools use Google anyway, plus displaying the result as HTML is better than having them displayed as plain text (because there is still some sanity from the formatting point of view).

But that’s me. It boils down to personal preference in the end, because all of them share the same drawbacks – accuracy and loss of formatting are the two main culprits! If you are using Office or OpenOffice you might not want to leave the interface, or else if you don’t mind the digression, you can always visit Google Translate.

Do you know of some better free Translation tools? Sound off in the comments and let us know!

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• What Language Is This? 5 Tools to Identify Unknown Languages (22)
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At the outset, let me confess that machine translation usually sucks. You’re much better off with human translators any day. But what do you do for real-time chat? Till now, one had to use a different IM client like MeGlobe, to chat in a foreign language. Now, you can use Microsoft’s TBot. No installation required!

Microsoft has an impressive array of translation tools for users, webmasters, and developers, like Live Translator, but the release of Windows Live Messenger Translation bot (TBot) last year is still not widely known. Using TBot, you can chat with others in up to 13 foreign languages, or even chat with TBot itself to practice learning a foreign language. What’s more, you do not actually need to use Windows Live Messenger. You can use any IM client you like, as long as it supports the MSN protocol. Let’s see how you can use TBot in 3 easy steps to chat in a foreign language.

Step #1: Add TBot to your Contacts

To get started, you will first need to add TBot to your contact list.

From the Live Messenger toolbar, select the ‘Add a contact’ option as shown above, and add ‘mtbot@hotmail.com’ as the contact address.

Click ‘Send Invitation’ on the next screen to add TBot to your contact list. There is no need for any personal message. You should now see ‘Translator’ as one of your available contacts as shown below:

That’s it. You are all set!

Step #2: Invite TBot to a Conversation

When you want TBot’s translation services to help in a conversation, click the ‘Invite’ menu in the conversation window.

From the contact list that appears, select ‘Translator (Available, Agent)’.

TBot enters the conversation and asks you to select the target language.

I chose Russian as an example, and typed ‘12’:

To check out the list of TBot’s commands, you can enter ‘TBot ?’:

Step #3: Chat in a Foreign Language

For the sake of this post, to imitate two people chatting, I used two different IM clients – Windows Live Messenger and Pidgin. Let us suppose I’m English Dude with Live Messenger, chatting with Russian Gal who is averse to installing any Microsoft software and thus uses Pidgin on Linux. Russian Gal uses the ‘TBot change’ command to select Russian as her Source Language:

With TBot all set to translate at both ends, both of them now chat. This is what English Dude sees in his Live Messenger:

While Russian Gal sees the following in her Pidgin client:

As you can see, English Dude and Russian Gal are having an engaging conversation with the help of real-time translation by TBot.

TBot has his own profile in Windows Live Spaces, where you will also find a mini-FAQ. If you’re traveling in a foreign country, add TBot to Windows Live Messenger on your Windows Mobile device to get a free Translation Assistant with you!

Have you tried any other real-time translation software? How was your experience with TBot? Do let us know in the comments!

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Import mail and contacts from other accounts

You know the “Invite Mr. X to Gmail” notice that appears when you send an email to a non-Gmail user? Ever invited someone, only to get a response like, “I have all my mail and contacts in [Yahoo/Hotmail/other email provider], how can I possibly switch?” Or maybe, this very reason was holding you back to make a complete switch to Gmail? Earlier, you could do this via POP3, by exporting and importing contacts via CSV. Well, guess what? Importing contacts just got a heck of a lot easier — down to almost a no brainer.

All you have to do is click on “Settings” and then hop over to the “Accounts and Imports” tab. Specify the account you want to import the mail and contacts from, choose the options and you are done! Most of the major email providers are supported.

Gmail uses Trueswitch to transfer mail and contacts, so you might want to have a look at their Terms and Privacy Policy if you are concerned. The feature is available to newly created accounts but may take some time to reach you if you are a long time Gmail user.

Oh and by the way, you can have new messages from your old account forwarded to Gmail for 30 days just in case you feel like Gmail isn’t for you, although I doubt you would!

Inbox Preview

You ought to try Gmail on slower connections to appreciate how wonderful the idea of Inbox Preview is. Imagine you are waiting for Gmail to load, looking at the progress bar, wondering if you could just grab it and pull it towards the right! Well, how about doing something worthwhile actually related to email? What if you could get a sneak peak of your account while Gmail is still loading?

That is precisely what Inbox Preview has to offer. It present a static (means you cannot read, delete or perform other operations) view of the 10 most recent messages in your account. So now, even before Gmail has finished loading, you’ll know that you only have got hate mail from your ex-girlfriend, so might as well close the browser. Never mind loading! On a more serious note though, I LOVE IT. Can’t believe it was not there all this while.

Insert Images

Nothing too fancy but useful all the same. You can now click a button, upload an image and insert it into the mail. No more copy and paste tricks to add images to your mail. Just enable “Insert Images” from the Labs settings page.

Sender time zone and automatic message translation

“Sender time zone” lets you know the current time in the part of the world from where your good old friend has sent you the email. Primarily, it shows a green or red phone icon depending on whether the sender would be probably awake (9am to 6pm) to receive a call. You can click on the “Show details” link and you will be shown the sender’s exact local time.

Automatic message translation, as the name implies, helps you translate emails written in a language other than your own. You get a “Translate message” link in your email if Gmail detects another language. Click on it and you are done. Useful if you have friends who can’t write/read language you are well versed in.

View PowerPoint and TIFF files

Gmail has always had the option to view PDF, .doc, .xls and .ppt files as HTML or provided you with a link to open them in Google Docs. Not so long ago, Gmail added an online PDF viewer that presents the file as it is, displaying images and proper formatting. Well now, you can view PowerPoint and TIFF files similarly with all the same features.

What do you think is the one feature is most useful to Gmail? Okay, make that two. Or as many as you like! We would love to hear about them in the comments. Also, what else would you like to be added to Gmail Labs next? How about a Google map showing where the email originated from?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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“Be careful of what you wish, it may come true.” That statement is wise indeed. Especially when you wish upon a search engine named Google. I found out that adding other languages to Apple Dictionary is a snap.

Activating Other Built In Dictionaries on your Mac

First and foremost, let’s explore the Dictionary.app before we go too far. It turns out that Dictionary in Leopard already comes with six built in dictionaries plus access to Wikipedia as online reference.
Wait a minute, six? Most people thought there are only three: New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, and Apple Dictionary.

But if you go to Dictionary’s Preferences (Dictionary → Preferences or simply hit the Command + Comma button), you will have checklist options to activate another three: Japanese, Japanese-English, and Japanese Synonyms. (As to why Apple add built in Japanese dictionaries to Dictionary, you have to ask Apple directly.)

Another less-known feature that also can be activated here is Wikipedia search on another non-English language. Just select the Wikipedia from the list, and then look at the option panel that will show up below it. There are several choices of languages to be chosen by giving tick to the box, but user can add one more language from the drop down lists.

After closing the Preferences window and restarting the Dictionary, you can see the full list of new active dictionaries.

Adding External Dictionaries

The first logical step to add more dictionaries is to search for ready-made “.dict” file. You can accomplish this by going to download sites or directly to google and seach “Apple Dictionary plugin” and/or “.dict”. There are several dictionaries available such as OpenThesaurus German Dictionary Plugin and Thai-English translation dictionary.

But you can go further by converting other ready-made dictionary format files and translate them into Apple Dictionary’s format. The steps are:

First: acquire the dictionaries

1. Go to StarDict and choose one or more of the many available dictionaries.

2. You can also go to the StarDict online dictionary.



3. Choose the source and destination language.

4. A link or links will show up and when you click on one of them, a pop up window will appear with the download link of the dictionary.



5. Choose as many or as little dictionaries as you need.

Second: Convert the dictionaries

To convert the dictionaries that we’ve downloaded into something that could be opened by Apple Dictionary App, we need DictUnifier.

1. Download the installer and run it.

2. Choose (one of) the dictionary file(s) that you’ve downloaded.

3. Click “Convert”.



4. The conversion process will take from about several seconds to a few minutes.

5. After finish converting, the converted dictionary will automatically exported to Apple Dictionary, and the Dictionary app will be opened.

Simple enough, but please note that some users reported that DictUnifier can not convert several StarDict’s dictionary. If this is the case, just remember to put the same name in the Dictionary Name and Dictionary ID fields.

Finally, you can learn more about Apple Dictionary and how to build your own dictionary by going to Apple’s Dictionary Services Programming Guide.

Do you have other favorite dictionary application? Share using the comment below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Top 4 Online Translation Services (38)
• Lingoes – A Portable Dictionary and Multi-Language Translator in Your Pocket (10)
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• Whadja say? Online Word Pronunciation Guides (9)
• Translation For MSN: Auto Translates Messages While Chatting (17)

Well then…after this sort of catartic beginning, let me say that I have been making a research trying to set aside my own prejudices and looking for positive things online Machine Translation services have…at least some of them. I would like to share my impressions with you. These are my top four online translation services.

Google Translate

Google Translate is still a beta service provided by Google Inc. In my opinion the bestonline translation service, its main function is the translation of texts or webpages into the desired language. It supports a truly good set of languages, and for some of them users may be asked to kindly add possible translations, especially in the case of technical terms so as to be included in future updates to the translation process.

Unlike other translation services such as Babel Fish and Yahoo which are based on SYSTRAN, Google Translate has its own translation software. The translations delivered are quite good indeed, though not perfect of course.

Of course, it also has its drawbacks, or let say…limitations. While the outcome when translating some languages is truly good enough (for instance from Spanish into English), it does not always deliver completely accurate translations, given that it does not apply grammar rules (nor human-like intuition of course) but a statistical analysis.

WorldLingo

Another free online translator that is pretty popular these days is the World Lingo translator website. WorldLingo is a translation company which online service allows translating parts of text or complete webpages,by using the same site.

Statistics say that this machine translation software can reflect the meaning at an accuracy rate of 70-%75. I must say that I tried it out…and I was happy to see that, if not 70 %, at least it does offer an accuracy of 60%, which is a very good percentage.

WorldLingo translator supports the translation of English, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, and Spanish.

It also allows you pulling up a window with drop-down menus where you can insert special characters (such as accented letters) and selecting which semantic field the documen

t belongs to (General, Legal, Technical, etc.) Any way, do not trust this too much, your choice will not make a big difference in the outcome.

SDL FreeTranslation

SDL is very popular among professional translators for its well-known TMs (Translation Memory) which truly put a load away of their backs when dealing with huge translation projects.

Regarding its free online translation service, something interesting I found out is that when you copy-paste your text to translate, you can choose between a machine Free Translation and a Human Translation which in some seconds gives you a quote and offers the translation done by a human being.

However, while showing a good deal of respect to professional translators, their MT application is not at all good enough for me. Actually, the level of accuracy is minimal, though of course it may help you to get an idea of the overall meaning of the translated text.

Yahoo Babel Fish

Babel Fish uses the technology of Systran. It offers the service of free online translation of short texts and webpages. It also allows including a translation box in your webpage to see it in several languages (English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese.

Although it is in a way backed by the old quality and popularity of Systran, I must say the translations it offers are far away from being totally accurate. Users could grasp the general meaning of the text by making some effort, but in my opinion it is definetely not a really good app.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Lingoes – A Portable Dictionary and Multi-Language Translator in Your Pocket (10)
• Expand Mac’s Dictionary App by Adding Additional Languages (14)
• What Language Is This? 5 Tools to Identify Unknown Languages (22)
• Whadja say? Online Word Pronunciation Guides (9)
• Translation For MSN: Auto Translates Messages While Chatting (17)

A contingent requirement lead me to the ‘discovery’ of Research feature in Microsoft Word 2007. Since Office 2003, this feature has been a quite presence.  Perhaps, not used as frequently because for most of us a browser is more second nature. But a Research feature within the Office suite has its own value too.

Simply put, the research options button provides one click access to particular reference books and research sites that the Microsoft Office 2007 suite provides as information resources. For example, the Research  services to choose from include dictionaries, thesauruses, and various Internet research Web sites in several languages. The Research pane also includes a very useful translation service.

3 ways to access the research feature

Stuck at a word for a meaning or its nuance? Get the dope on the word by either…

1. Right clicking on the word and selecting Look Up… from the context menu.



2. Select the word and Alt-Click on it.



3. Open the Research pane by going to – Review – Proofing – Research.

Set up your Research Resources

The research functionality includes quite a few known resources as can be seen from the dropdown. Third party reference mines like Dow Jones’ Factiva iWorks, the premiere online library HighBeam, Gale Company Profiles and Microsoft’s own Live Search coupled with its rich Encarta dictionary and encyclopedia.

To fine tune our results we can include a few more options and exclude those we don’t want. Configure the research sources by following these steps -

1. Click on Research options at the bottom of the Research pane.
2. The Research Options box gives us checkboxes to select or deselect for Reference books, Research sites and Business /Financial sites we choose.



3. The Add Services button puts in the choices in the Research Options dialog dropdown.

Similarly, the Update/Remove button updates or removes the services of our choice. The Parental Control is a filter which sieves the results and screens out the offensive and the vile in the results.

The quite so useful translate service for a word or a phrase

Word 2007 can translate a single word or a phrase into 15 languages. Translating a single word is simple through the right click menu or through the search box in the Research pane. The word is looked up in the dictionary and the meaning returned. Translating a phrase involves sending the selected text to WorldLingo.com, a language translation service. The results open up in a browser window.

Note: The selected text is unencrypted so user discretion is advised when sending sensitive text.

The sum and the substance

The research feature is not only a Word 2007 tool but it is inbuilt into every Office 2007 application. It also combines several third party sources like Gale’s company profiles, WorldLingo or HighBeam along with standard issue Microsoft resources like Encarta or Live Search.

Yes, for a more comprehensive lookup I might have to head over to my favorite search engine, but having a research option with the plus of a translation tool is also help enough.

So, have you also ignored the research functionality of Office 2007? Or are you a frequent user? Let us know about your satisfaction score on this one.

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I use Yahoo’s Babel Fish almost daily translating languages or web pages. But if I don’t know what language it is to begin with I am out of luck. Plain and simple. I have tried may things to identify language of text over the years. I have Googled individual words or tried looking them up in multi-language dictionaries but this is hands down as simple as it can get.

If I was Yahoo I would look into buying this technology ASAP!

Alrighty then, let’s check out how it works. The software is called PolyGlot 3000. A very nifty name I might add – meaning multiple languages.

This language identifier application is only a 2.2MB in size and runs on Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP or 2003.

Simply fire it up when it finishes downloading and you will see this:

It looks pretty straight forward… You type in or paste your text that you want to recognize and hit that magic “Recognize Language” button or the F9 hot key and bingo bango your language is recognized:

It came back with an answer super quick and the answer was correct. 62% accuracy. Not bad with a few little sentences.  Let’s try another language. Do you know what it is?

I hit F9 and Polyglot not only knows that it is Russian, it is 100% sure of it and even specifies a more specific dialect as being Pre-Reform.

This is pretty damn impressive. There is only one real preference or option you can modify. That is the amount of languages it is using to compare your text or document. Let’s take a look at it:

By selecting less languages you can speed things up a bit. Even though in all my tests I did not have to wait more than 30 seconds.

But I guess if you have wild foreigners yelling at you, time is probably of the essence

According to their website over 400 languages are supported:

The current version of Polyglot 3000 distinguishes 474 languages and dialects. This is  biggest number of recognized languages for a language identification software to date.

Among the more than 400 supported languages only about 110 languages can be called popular. The others are very rare or even already extinct.

One of the most rare and, unfortunately, dying out languages is Pipil. In 1970 there were about 40 persons who spoke on it. Now only about 20 persons remain.

Another rare language is Yukaghir which about 170 persons speak. The Yukaghir live in the northeast of Russia, in the Republic of Yakutia, above the arctic circle. One of developers of the Polyglot 3000 lived near that region for a while.

In this list you can see all supported languages. Some languages have several possible names which differ in spelling, but coincide in pronunciation. In the given list all variants of the name are listed wherever possible.

Do you use something similar? How do you get your translating or language distinguishing on? Let us know in the comments kiddies!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Here are some Google services that need a lot more loving (cue Barry White music) :

(1) Google Labs

My favourite online playground (although the offerings at the moment are a little dull). This is where new Google products are first given the beta label and unleashed onto an unsuspecting world for testing and commenting. If you try something out in Google Labs, you are invited to email the Google team involved with comments / suggestions / complaints (on two occasions, I got a personal reply back from a member of the team, discussing my comments).

The way I see it, this is a good way to influence future Google products by getting involved in a product’s development. How many Google users use Google products but don’t bother to provide any creative input to make them better? Next time a Google product doesn’t go as planned, don’t complain on a forum – contact Google and offer constructive advice & criticism!

(2) Google Pack

If you know an internet newbie who has not so much knowledge of the internet and software products (like my mother), Google Pack provides an excellent software package to start with (although I personally wouldn’t choose Norton and Real Player). Check out full program list here.

(3) Google Translate

Translate text or even complete webpages into eleven languages (you can even translate from “simplified” Chinese to “traditional” Chinese). As with all online translators, this won’t give you a 100% accurate translation (online translators can’t grasp things like idioms and contexts) but if you want to buy those crates of AK-47 assault rifles from that online shop in North Korea, Google Translate will let you overcome that Korean language barrier.

(4) Google Co-Op

Allows you to customize Google search results with your own self-rolled search engines. You can also provide information from your website as a subscribed link or if you are a specialist in a particular subject area, you can label and categorize search information which other people can click on. Again, this is another way you can actively help in making search much better (otherwise known as user-generated input).

(5) Google Code

This one is for the computer geeks (of which I am a honorary member). Allows you to find and download source codes and developer API’s to make mashups for Google products.

(6) Google News

Google News has been around for a while and is old-hat to many. But how many of you knew that you could customise the page to only see the news you want to see? Or the fact you can set up customised RSS feeds for the news subjects that interest you? Never miss another news story about Paris Hilton ever again. You can also use the new news archive to find very old news stories, either scanned pages of publications or online sources. Some free, others not.

(7) Google Patent Search

If you’re in business and you’ve developed a hot new invention, don’t you want to check first to see if anybody got in there before you and filed a patent? Google Patent Search will show you the patent applications for pretty much everything so you can see right away if you are the sole inventor of the combined coat hanger and cigarette lighter.

(8) Google Blog Search

One of my personal favourites as it helps me to find current blogs on my favourite subjects (and swell my 200+ RSS reading list even further). Find blogs catering to various subjects. Want to know if anybody shares your overwhelming passion for navel lint by blogging about it? GBS will help you out.

(9) Google Alerts

Want to know if anybody has been talking about you online? Maybe somebody trashed your website by insulting it in a forum? Or a disgruntled customer to your online shop made disparaging remarks in their blog? By setting up a Google Alert (with pre-defined search terms), you will get an email with links anytime Google finds something matching your keywords. Britney Spears probably has one set up now with the keywords “Britney” and “MTV Music Awards”.

(10) Google Catalogs

Guys rejoice! (and women too). Want to buy some Victoria’s Secret lingerie? Or perhaps a new light-sabre is in order for you trusty Jedi Knights? Google now offers the chance to browse through scanned pages of catalogs and magazines such as GQ and Cosmopolitan to find products you might be looking for. No more raking in bins looking for catalogs of women in bikinis – Google now gives them to you online!

Do you know of a Google service that needs more user loving? Let us know in the comments. I’ve got Lionel Richie on speed-dial.

Mark O’Neill is a freelance writer, proofreader, editor and blogger. Check out his blog at http://www.betterthantherapy.net

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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