<<If you don't know the meaning of a word, the pictures may help you.>>

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/10/10-tips-for-google-image-search.html

That's cool Ionut. By the way, I wanted to automate this – search a word in English, get Google Image results in Japanese, Chinese and so on. Only trouble is that the Google translator screenscraping returns wrong characters the way I tried! http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.php/browse_thread/thread/87741107f55be9c6/41ecb1df603f8023

Can anybody help?

If we're talking of Chess in your G4tB page, it's still unfinished as far as I see. It recognizes en passant and castling, but not checkmate(!). :-/

Yeah, when I find a word in English that I don't understand I use three sources to understand it's meaning. Google Image search is best for nouns, Wikipedia and it's links to articles in other languages (including my native Polish) is very helpful when it comes to more scientific vocabulary. And of course there is always answers.com

What a wonderful – and probably unanticipated – use for image search (as an aid to translation).

I would love to see a mashup that translates whole swathes of text into images! I wonder what my website would look like in Google-image-speak.

On another note, I think you've come up with what would be a nice enhancement of image search. There is really no reason the results should be limited to one language (of course, China would never allow it for searches on controversial subjects like "tianenman square")

Gradiva

I don't think it's a good idea to use image search for translation because words have more senses, and usually you'll see the most used sense.

search for "bank" (that has a lot of senses: http://www.answers.com/bank&r=67)

Your post stroke a soft spot in my soul :) Yours is very exciting – and wise – way to use Google Images, I'll definitely do it, too.

However, being a Russian, I found that Google's Translate tool can be inaccurate – it often produces quite funny results on large chunks of text. Altavista's babelfish (actually, it's Systran beyond it) produces _much_ better results.

2Gradiva Couzin: "I would love to see a mashup that translates whole swathes of text into images! " – I beliebe that Yahoo's Pipe can do _exactly_ that – in fact, I was going to expereiment with it exactly for thjis very purpose.

2Ludwik: "when I find a word in English that I don't understand I use three sources to understand it's meaning" – you may also consider online version of Merriam-Webster, too (http://www.m-w.com) – I just love it.

Yahoo Pipes doesn't allow you to screenscrape just any page, the page must unfortunately have RSS for it to work (I guess they want to conform to robots.txt, which makes sense, though that also renders the tool unusable for many approaches).

> I don't think it's a good idea to use image search
> for translation because words have more senses, and
> usually you'll see the most used sense.

It's not perfect, but it's better than using a translation without the "image check". In other words: use a real human translator if you can, use several hacks like these if you're desperate...

Hmm. There should be a (maybe paid) human answer site handling small translations. I can't even submit small translations to click2translate.com if I paid (well, I could, but they make me pay for 1 hour even if it's just 1 word). Almost everyone who's bilingual could be a "researcher" for such a site and earn easy micropayments, answering questions like "How do I translate 'it's raining cats and dogs' into German??"

Search. There are many pages like this one:

http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/rain.htm

This was just a random example, Ionut – but there are 1000s of translation needs where there are no such pages. So to use a more realistic use-case, I want to know what "Rotate the pipes in above game so that all ends are closed" means in Korean (edit: and Japanese, and French, and Spanish, and so on – that is an actual use-case because I need this for my games site).

You could build something a la "Google in Your Language" and let your visitors translate your text. It might work.

It will be difficult to choose the perfect translation from more inputs.

Re "I want to know what "Rotate the pipes in above game so that all ends are closed" means in Korean (edit: and Japanese, and French, and Spanish, and so on " – there is a _very_ friendly translators community at LANTRA mailing list (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7110/lantra.htm) – I used to be subscribed and can confess that queries like yours are quite often.

To make sorting through LANTRA-L mail easier, they devised guidelines on headers and subject lines. Question like yours might be sent to LANTRA with subject like "QUERY: What does it mean in Korean, Japanese, French, and Spanish".

Those subject lines are described in their FAR – although it is by no way complete. For instance, I used to see lots of messages with subject line "JOB: small EN -> Korean diting needed". Myself, I was able to find proper people for any kind of translation/editing job I had in mind.

And you dont need be a translator to get subscribed.

What differs LANTRA from freelancers directories like elance is _quality_

Cool, thanks Alles, I'm subscribed now and will try this...

Turns out some of the members of that list frown upon such messages, Alles :) Oh well, maybe I'll find a solution one day.