Google announces new tool to help translators bring more Arabic content online

The Toolkit works by providing the user with a automatically translated version of any page; the translator can then correct and improve the translation, check corrections with Google's online dictionary, and publish new web pages to quickly produce Arabic-language versions of web content.

The translations suggested by the Toolkit will also improve over time, as it learns from translators' improvements.

Google has for the last few months been working with top contributors from Wikipedia throughout the Middle East, professionals in Cairo, and volunteer teachers and students at Saudi Arabia's Effat University, to begin to bring more Wikipedia content into Arabic. Effat volunteers translated over 100,000 words of Wikipedia articles into Arabic.

These articles were among the most widely searched articles throughout the Middle East, and they were either previously unavailable in Arabic or they were much abbreviated versions of the English articles. They will soon be available on Wikipedia in Arabic.

The Toolkit is integrated into Wikipedia as well as Knol, Google's platform for internet users to write articles on specific subjects. Users can also enter all kinds of web content into the Toolkit and easily publish translated web pages.

For some time, one of Google's priorities has been to help promote the creation and translation of more content on the web in Arabic, and the Google Translator Toolkit provides a powerful, simple-to-use way for Arabic speakers to contribute to this effort.

"This product is a great way to bring our translation technology to bear on a problem we've been trying to help solve for a while now. Machine Translation is a powerful tool, but to provide really high-quality content, we needed to combine the scale and speed of this technology with a human touch. With this product we hope to provide a quick way to bring high quality web."

said Michael Galvez, Product Manager for the Google Translator Toolkit.