Microsoft’s Windows Live Translator Beta

Windows Live Translator is the newest member of Microsoft’s Live Services fleet. It’s pretty similar to Google’s Translator Tool, where you can enter a block of text and translate it into variety of languages like – German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional. Or you can enter the URL and get the entire web page translated.

Translating the URL in Google’s Translation Tool will show you the translated page in fullscreen view, but Windows Live Translator gives you an option to view the translated page in four different views. You can choose between side-by-side layout, which shows you the original and translated page side-by-side, or Top / Bottom layout, which shows one page on the top or another. You can also see the page with hover translation view, in which you’ll have to either hover your mouse over original text to see the translated text or translated text to see the original text.

Both Google’s Translator Tool and Windows Live Translator use the same Systran engine to translate the text. Machine translations are not always accurate, but it can give you a rough idea of what you are reading. I think Windows Live Translator’s side-by-side view or hover translation proves to be a great tool for those who are attempting to learning new languages. Of course, there are downsides like no fullscreen view, and it doesn’t translate text within inline frames.