Monday, April 6, 2015

Translation Assistant


Business Need

I write mobile apps in several languages, and aside from paid translation services, I often use Google Translate, Bing Translate, and similar services. Sometimes I am dealing with 6 or more languages and it becomes very time consuming to translate one phrase at a time, and sometimes I just need a phrase I previously translated. Also, I often need to compare translations between services in order to determine the optimally translated phrase.

Overview

This solution provides a way for a user to quickly translate a phrase or sentence into one or more languages. For my purposes, I included nine language options that I commonly deal with, but the solution could easily be expanded to include dozens of language. I chose to go with nine languages to keep the interface simple and clean.

The solution translates the phrase into the desired languages using both Google and Microsoft translation services. The solution also reverse-translates the phrases, meaning the translated text is sent back to the translation service to be translated back into English. This is useful in determining accuracy of the translated text.

The steps to using this solution are:
1.     Enter a phrase or sentence to be translated
2.     Selected up to 9 languages in which to translate the phrase and choose “Translate”
3.     View the “Translate” worksheet, which shows the original phrase, along with its translation and reverse-translation in its various language, using both Google and Microsoft translation services
4.     A history of translated phrases for reference, along with a button to clear the history

What used to take me several minutes of manual effort now takes a few second with this solution. Below is a screenshots that demonstrates how this solution is used.






 

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