In a move designed to keep up the pace with Google, Microsoft is now providing online translation software in over eight languages. The Windows Live Translator beta system can be found on http://translator.live.com.
Industry analysts are united in the opinion that Google is the biggest threat facing the software giant from Redmond. Google has made online translation a key part of their R&D plan and have pumped large amounts of money into a system which is widely seen as one of the best around. Microsoft has now responded with a system of its own.
Microsoft is not a newcomer to translation software technology and had partnered in the past with Worldlingo, bundling translation capabilities in some of its MS Office applications. In its new online offering however, Microsoft has developed its own statistical machine translation engine which supports German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (simplified and traditional), and Japanese. Microsoft has also partnered with Systrans to offer additional language pairs. Microsoft, perhaps in return for the Systrans-provided technology, has provided a direct link to Systrans' online store from its online system.
Some of the questions that remain to be answered include: will the online translation system be integrated into the MSN.com search engine, allowing viewers to translate foreign language search results? Which translation system will be chosen should Microsoft eventually buy Yahoo (as rumors have indicated for the past year)? Yahoo owns the tremendously popular Babelfish translation system. How will Microsoft, a late comer and also-ran in the online translation game, compete and gain market share given the stiff competition? What are Microsoft's future plans for its online translation system and what unique niche do they hope to occupy? Time will tell.
11:53:15 AM 
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