Engadget: Vivaldi adds mail, calendar, RSS and translation tools to its privacy-focused browser. “Vivaldi has released a major update for its eponymous web browser for privacy-minded power users. Version 4.0 bring with it a translation tool, along with beta versions of Vivaldi Mail, Calendar, and Feed Reader. The update is available now on Windows, Mac and Linux and Android devices.”
PubMed: Accuracy of Google Translate in translating the directions and counseling points for top-selling drugs from English to Arabic, Chinese, and Spanish. “For the top 100 drugs, 38 unique directions for use and 170 unique counseling points were identified for translation. For the 38 directions for use, 29 (76.3%) of the Arabic translations were accurate, 34 (89.5%) of the Chinese (simplified) translations were accurate, and 27 (71%) of the Spanish translations were accurate. For the 170 counseling points, 92 (54.1%) of the Arabic translations were accurate, 130 (76.5%) of the Chinese (simplified) translations were accurate, and 65 (38.2%) of the Spanish translations were accurate. Of the 247 inaccurate translations, 72 (29.1%) were classified as highly clinically significant or potentially life-threatening.”
Engadget: Google’s AI photo app uses crowdsourcing to preserve endangered languages. “Google has a new way to preserve endangered languages: give cultures the AI tools they need to protect the languages themselves. The company has launched Woolaroo, an open source photo translation web app (also available through Google Arts & Culture for Android and iOS) that uses machine learning and image recognition to help preserve languages on the brink. As a user, you just have to point your phone’s camera at an object to have the AI recognize and describe it in a given language, complete with pronunciation.”
Economic Times: Google translation AI botches legal terms ‘enjoin,’ ‘garnish’: Study. “Translation tools from Alphabet Inc’s Google and other companies could be contributing to significant misunderstanding of legal terms with conflicting meanings such as “enjoin,” according to research due to be presented at an academic workshop on Monday.”
University of Oklahoma: University Libraries Acquires Award-Winning Translator’s Archive. “University Libraries’ Chinese Literature Translation Archive has recently acquired noted Scottish translator Brian Holton’s translation archive. These works include a treasure-trove of material on Holton’s translation of Classical Chinese poetry into both English and Scots (Holton is the lone translator of Chinese into Scots) as well as over two decades of hand-written correspondence, draft material, and other important historical documents that reveal the foundation of his partnership with contemporary Chinese poet Yang Lian.”
Nunatsiaq News: Microsoft adds Inuit language to translation app. “The Inuit language just got a little bit more accessible. Microsoft has announced its Microsoft Translator app now supports Inuktitut. That means anyone using the app will be able to translate more than 70 language to, or from, the language.”
9to5 Google: Google Lens for Android rolling out offline translate capability. “Since last year, Google has been working on letting you perform translations in its visual search tool without an internet connection. Google Lens is now rolling out offline translate on Android.”
Slator: Thai Mistranslation Shows Risk of Auto-Translating Social Media Content. “After a machine translation of a post from English into Thai about the King’s birthday proved offensive to the Thai monarchy, Facebook Thailand said it was deactivating auto-translate on Facebook and Instagram, revamping machine translation (MT) quality, and offering the Thai people its ‘profound apology.’”
Arab News: Google’s new tool lets you translate Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. “If you’ve ever wondered what messages the Ancient Egyptians were trying to convey with their hieroglyphics, Google’s new tool might just be able to help. In celebration of the anniversary of the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, Google Arts and Culture has released a new AI-powered tool, Fabricius, that allows you to decode and translate the ancient symbols and characters into both Arabic and English.”
Lion’s Roar: 84000 Buddhist translation initiative launches “Save Wisdom Now” video campaign. “84000, a non-profit global initiative to translate the words of the Buddha into modern languages, has marked their tenth anniversary with a new video campaign titled ‘Save Wisdom Now’ that tells the story of the project. The organization is working to preserve the Tibetan Buddhist Canon, the world’s largest and oldest collections of writings with 230,000 pages ‘locked within the fading Classical Tibetan language.’”
UCLA: UCLA creates multilingual website for coronavirus information. “It’s abundantly clear that the COVID-19 pandemic has not hit all people equally, and part of that disparity is informational. Many communities have an increased vulnerability because of a lack access to official news, public health information and safety recommendations in a language other than English. To help remedy that, faculty from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and the Asian American Studies Center quickly came together recently to launch TranslateCovid.org. This new website presents health and safety recommendations and other information in more than 40 languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Armenian, Japanese and Vietnamese.”
Search Engine Journal: Google Translate Widget is Free Again for Some Websites to Use. “Google is again supporting the Google Translate website translator tool in an effort help people get the information they need amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Google had previously withdrawn support for this plugin, which gave site visitors a way to translate pages into 100+ languages for free.”
BBC: Web sleuths spot British Museum gaffe online. “The British Museum is updating its online collection after mistaking a copyright notice for the name of a Turkish postcard-printing company. The museum described ‘Her Hakki Mahfuzdur’ as ‘Turkey’s largest producer of postcards’. But a Turkish diplomat on Twitter pointed out the phrase means ‘all rights reserved’ – and is not the name of a stationery company.”
Times of India: Google Translate gets support for five new languages. “Google translate help users by giving them perfect translations in different languages. The company has rolled out the latest update for the app which will make it useful for more people. Google has announced that it is adding five new languages to the Google translate app. This is the first expansion made by the company in the past few years.”
