The live translation feature in Google Translate works quite well, but it would be even better with live round-trip translation. The state-of-the-art in automatic translation is very good now, but I find the round-trip lets me refine the original text, and decrease the “information loss” in the translation.
Information loss in this context can be considered the difference (or delta) between the source and the round-trip. Making the complete round-trip interactive makes re-phrasing and re-wording easier, and I can easily adjust what I am trying to say based on the results.
The results are improved because adjusting the source either
makes it less ambiguous or more similar to the target language, or
brings it closer to a well-translated or common phrase in the target language.
The linked text and images take you right to Google Translate with this example data pre-loaded.
Sudden Internet fame is unpredictable. What is predictable is the temptation to use his fame to push some political or nationalist message. Poor Mr. Trololo!
Внезапная слава Интернету непредсказуемо. Что является вполне предсказуемой соблазн использовать свою славу интернет доставить некоторые политические или националистические сообщения. Бедный мистер Trololo!
Round-trip:
Sudden fame internet unpredictably. What is predictable temptation to use his fame to bring the Internet, some political or nationalistic message. Poor Mr. Trololo!
Before the final two illustrations, I will break to introduce Mr. Trololo. He discusses his Internet fame here (in Русский of course)
Google’s largest developer event returns to San Francisco in 2010. Google I/O brings together thousands of developers for two days of highly technical content, focused on pushing the boundaries of web applications through open web technologies and Google developer products like App Engine, Google Web Toolkit, Android, Chrome, APIs, and more.
Early registration for Google I/O will open in January 2010. Until then, you can check out highlights from Google I/O 2009 below, and follow our updates on Twitter.
What is Go? Go is a new experimental systems programming language intended to make software development fast. Our goal is that a major Google binary should be buildable in a few seconds on a single machine. The language is concurrent, garbage-collected, and requires explicit declaration of dependencies. Simple syntax and a clean type system support a number of programming styles.
Keep Sidewiki spam and malware free. Spam includes, but is not limited to, unwanted promotional or commercial content, or posts with gibberish such as keyword spamming. We also don’t allow the transmission of malware, viruses, or anything that may disrupt the service or harm others.
Speak your mind without being hateful or threatening to others. Lively discussions can happen without posting hateful, threatening, harassing, or bullying content. We encourage you to work out disputes or disagreements on your own. However, in serious or egregious cases, we will take action.
Keep it legal. Don’t engage in unlawful activities on this product. If we are notified of unlawful activities, we will take appropriate action, which may include removing access to Sidewiki, your Google account, or reporting you to the appropriate authorities.
Respect copyright laws. We will respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement. Repeated infringement of intellectual property rights, including copyright, will result in account termination. For more information on Google’s copyright policies, please see here
Don’t post or link to sexually explicit material. Posts that are irrelevant and serve to drive traffic to material with nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit content are considered spam and aren’t allowed. We also don’t allow posts that promote unlawful or inappropriate sexual acts with or depictions of children or animals.
Google has a zero-tolerance policy against child pornography. If we become aware of child pornography on our properties, the content will be removed and we will report it and its owners to the appropriate authorities.
Don’t pretend to be someone else. We don’t allow impersonation of others or other behavior that is misleading or intended to be misleading.
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Setting aside questions about Sidewiki’s purpose, originality, et cetera, it seems that Sidewiki has opened a new front in the Content Wars. There is a clear incentive to adding Sidewiki content: Google exposure, such as quick access to your Google profile, and traffic to whatever links you include.
This is one more place for spammers and scammers to go crazy, to say nothing of self-promoting “social media experts” and the like.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not at all excited about the prospect of more “gardening chores,” especially since Google has not done a good job in preventing and removing Google Groups spammers or Google Maps errors.
What do you think? Be the first and tell me in a Sidewiki comment on this site if you dare.
20100804 at 20:49 
Google Bike
