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Google Docs Now Offering Translation Services

Monday, August 31st, 2009

The online word processing system and the one that helps users to use spreadsheets online, Google Docs, is now offering translation service using which the user would be able to translate the documents in to 42 different languages. However, the service is not yet available for spreadsheets and the users would not be able to translate the spreadsheets as of now. The main aim based on which Google has introduced this service is that this would increase the amount of local content that is available over the web and that would eventually increase the number of local population that would be using the web and the services of Google.
This translation service that has been offered by Google Docs would certainly help users who need to translate documents into multiple languages. However, the fact that is noticed many of the automated translation services is that the context of the sentence would be lost when a sentence is translated from one language to the other. When tried by users, it was noticed that the translation service works to be fine except for cases that it does not translate uncommon proper nouns. But this is not at all bad, as this would reduce loads of work for users who mainly deal with tasks that needs automatic translation. Moreover, it would also reduce the amount of time that the users would otherwise be spending on using different tools to translate the document into different languages. In this case, this would be much easier as the users would be able to use a single mechanism to translate.
Transliteration is not yet introduced by Google Docs. If this as well were implemented, it would be of great use to the users, as this would even help the users to use the same old English keyboard to type a document in a foreign language. Google Docs latest translation service does not even support the Transliteration bookmarklet that was introduced by Google itself as of now. But it might include it any time or even introduce some enhanced features in Google Doc, as it has been a specialty of Google to introduce varied and useful features in their applications. However, there are other transliteration services that are available online that allow users to transliterate documents in to few number of languages but they are all not as huge as Google Doc as it is offering translation services in 42 languages. This shows that it would not be difficult for it to upgrade its system and include the transliteration service for all these 42 languages or even include more languages to the list. As of now, with the services that are currently available with Google Docs, users would be able to translate their personal and official documents without any difficulty.

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