Microsoft Translator Hub, where automatic translation helps endangered languages

Beyond finely-tuned marketing slogans (“Where language meets the world”, “Bridging languages, cultures and technology”) and laudable intentions (“Microsoft Translator Hub is helping smaller languages thrive by putting the power to build machine translation systems in the hands of local communities”), What could be Microsoft's and its new Translator Hub's goals?

Kurrently, social search engine

If the big search engines try to put their hand in the social search cookie jar, it is still quite difficult to keep an eye on what is said and what is done on social networks.

How to translate idioms

Translating idioms is an exercise that cannot be improvised. A word-by-word translation is in the best case unsavory, and most of the time a complete nonsense.

For example, how can you translate the idiom to have a frog in one's throat?

Meet Volunia, a new search engine

Launched yesterday (on February 7) in its test phase, Volunia, the new search engine which is a true hybrid of social network and search engine, brings some fresh air and innovative concepts in the world of on-line search.

Seet & Meek, or a Power User experience feedback in a connected mode.

Star Wars languages

© Dark Lens, by Cédric Delsaux

The Star Wars linguistic universe counts many languages, either original or pidgins, most of them developed by Ben Burtt, sound designer for the Star Wars movies, from real languages recordings (English, Quechua, Tibetan, Zulu). Thus we find Bocce, Ewokese, Gunganese, Huttese, Jawaese, Neimoidian, and Shyriiwook. Mandalorian, or Mando’a, is an exception as it has a real grammar developed by the author Karen Traviss, as well as a writing system.

French numerical idiomatic expressions

Idiomatic expressions are locutions specific to a language, often colorful, and sometimes with the value of a popular saying. Most of the time, they cannot be translated word by word, but remain a good way to measure the cultural proximity of two languages. Besides, knowing the most used idiomatics of a language is a funny and interesting stage of its learning, as they tell a lot about its popular culture and its history rooted in a given time and place.

The evolution of web browsers

This dynamic visualization shows on the same timeline the apparition of each main web browser and their different versions, highlighting the technologies they support (flash, CSS, ajax…) and the current acceleration of the HTML5 tags support. We can even see how the browsers interfaces looked like in the past.