Facebook completely translated to Urdu

Posted by BA on Dec 20, 2011 in Facebook, Internet, Social Networking | 0 comments

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Look what I got in my notifications on Facebook today. Facebook says it has been completely translated into Urdu and now just some fine tuning is needed. Makes me proud as an Urdu speaker. Users who have opted to help Facebook in translations get such messages and you can either translate untranslated phrases and labels or you can vote if others are translating it right or not. Facebook has already being translated in many languages. Wanna contribute? Head to Facebook translations.

Facebook reaches 64 language mark

Posted by BA on Jul 9, 2009 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

We covered it earlier when Facebook hit 57 languages and within a month, Facebook has grown to 64 languages now. This is all done with the help of the community based translation mechanism used by languages application.

Note, the new languages include فارسی (Farsi), that is the most common language in Iran.

Following is the new list of languages being supported:

Transliteration at its best, Google does it again.

Posted by BA on Jul 5, 2009 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

I just stumbled upon this page on Google Beta labs that offers indic transliteration for several languages. The languages supported by this tool include Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu.

All of us have grown up using Internet in only one language. Now is the time, things are changing and a bunch of language options are available not only in operating systems and software, but also on popular web systems. But it took a lot of time to reach this point and all of us (well most of us) have already learnt to type our own languages using English character set.

Now, Google’s not only providing translation solutions, but transliteration is also gaining popularity. I have tried the solution out on Urdu language and the results are absolutely amazing. Its not only converting most of the words correctly, its also capable of handling the mystery of using different versions of ( ح – ہ ) or being sure when to use ت and when to use ط . For example, it correctly transliterates “bht” to “بھت” and “tht” to “تحت” . It also adds letters that are usually silent when typing in English. For example “Talat” is correctly transliterated to “طلعت” converting T correctly to ط , not ت and introducing ع while it was not obvious in English character version.

Following are a few results that really amazed me:

Chhachhoondar >>> چھچھوندر

Pakistan ka matlab kya la ilaha illalla >>> پاکستان کا مطلب کیا لا الہٰ الاللہ

Ap sab is pabandi say mustansna hain >>> اپ سب اس پابندی سے مستثنیٰ ہیں

Mustansar Husain Tarar >>> مستنصر حسین تارڑ

Chacha nay chachi ko chandni chowk main chandi ki chamchi say chatni chataai >>> چچا نے کچی کو چاندنی چوک میں چاندی کی چمچی سے چٹنی چٹائی

(This one was more of a riddle, used as a tounge twister usually)

Well, its an automated system and there are still some issues. For example it could not transliterate my name, is’nt that pretty simple?. Better luck next time Google!

Google wants you to teach their translation-engine!

Posted by BA on Jun 10, 2009 in Uncategorized | 1 comment

Google’s translation page has been my favorite after altavista and other older tools when it comes to translating pages and content. This is fast easy and convenient, but the results at times are not as correct as you expect. The human factor is missing and the results are not compliant with the norms of the language you translate into. At times the message gets translated, but the feel of the sentence or paragraph is not there.

How do you add a human touch to Google translation?

Google has launched Google Translator Toolkit to add this human touch to the automated translation. The idea is necessarily same as what Facebook did for its own site translation. Ask the users out there to help translate the site. But this time, its not about translating the labels, but its translating the whole web.

How it works
1. You select an article from Wikipedia (as their preferred set of pages) or simply enter a URL (any paeg on the web.
2. Translate the page using the Google translate engine
3. Now the toolkit shows the original and translated page side by side. The human translator can edit the automated translation to make it perfect.

These changes will help Google Translator engine learn the translation norms from the Human translators. The tranlation engine will then adopt these techniques when somebody translates the article later.

Facebook Translations

Posted by BA on Mar 2, 2009 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

Facebook has come up with another brave idea of translating the whole Facebook into local languages of the users. The list contains more than 60 languages from the world. The idea is to let the people translate the site themselves in their native languages.

The process is to add the “Translations” application. An invitation to this application popped up onto my home page when I logged in Facebook this morning.

Once you have added the application, you select your language and you are all set to start translation. You simply click “Go translate” and you can see phrases coming up on English. You click translate and type the appropriate translated phrases.

As Facebook is all about social interaction and community effort, all these translations will be verified and voted by the other users and eventually your Facebook localized version will be ready to be used.