How to Translate Between Languages for Free and Learn from Them?

Translating a new language can be a pain and hard. Spending money to translate does not make sense either. If you are in need of decent quality translation, then check out Yahoo Babel Fish or Bing Translator. Both these translators are powered by SYSTRAN, a reputed machine translation software company.

Yahoo! Babel Fish is a simple and easy to use language translator. It was initially owned by AltaVista with Yahoo! gaining control of Babel fish last year. To visit this translator click on -http://babelfish.yahoo.com/. A simple page with few boxes opens. The first box gives the option of translating a block of text. Below this, the language choice drop down box is available. There are 38 different language conversion choices offered here. Below this the user is given a choice to translate an entire webpage. To do so, simply type the webpage address and click translate. It is also available in a toolbar from the user's browser. Babel Fish can also be added to any site for translation. To access Babel Fish a Yahoo email account is not required.

The next translator is from Microsoft. The Bing Translator or formerly known as Live Search Translator is similar to Yahoo's. The only advantage here is the translator auto detects the language. This is useful in case the language is not known to the user. All other features are common to both of them.

Other companies too have come up with similar translators. Google Translate, SYSTRAN and GranTrams are other free translators. GranTrams is built specially for the Scandinavian languages. It also offers a text messaging service for translating words.

Google Translate is simple and neat. It is easy to use. It also offers languages like Welsh, Belarusian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swahili, Yiddish, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, Filipino, Estonian, Croatian, Czech, Malay, Hungarian and Lithuanian. These languages are not found in other translators. Google also offers pronunciation for words.

Translators can be fun to use. They can be used for learning new words and meanings. Using Google translator, pronunciation of different words can be heard and learnt. These translators can be added to the user's site to make it look attractive and also improve some traffic. Some users do a round trip translation for fun which basically means that a sentence is typed in one language, and then translated. With the translated text, again it is translated back to the original content.

Example of a round trip translation in Yahoo Babel Fish:

Friends forever ----> Amis pour toujours(French)

Amis pour toujours ----> Friends for always

Friends forever changes to Friends for always. Though the meaning is similar, it is not exactly right. This is known as Round Trip Translation. This is absolute fun. It is one of my favorite things to do in my spare time. Try translating and have fun!