Are the translators getting any better?

I have a friend who is struggling with the Simbolic. She speaks mostly French in sl, and sometimes the translation is great, but sometimes it's... not so great. Then she has to back up and clarify - the poor woman is having a hard time. Anything better, recommended out there?

I don't know of another one. Simbolic is MUCH better than Babbler was. I taught a class awhile back that had one Italian-only speaking student and she understood perfectly with the Simbolic.

Sorry your friend is having issues with it.

Speaking of translators, I see that Metabolt, an open source text based SL viewer, says it has built-in machine translation with 16 language pairs, although I didn't actually see that in the last version of Metabolt that I tried.

Do any of the non-LL graphical viewers have machine translation built in? I'm not seeing any but I might just be overlooking it.

Hank Ramos has a very useful translator that works like a charm.

He gives it away at his little pied a terre in Southern Grignano across the street from Cafe Jack..

X-LANG for the win

I speak to many different languages in my SL job - this has been so far the BEST and fastest translation device I have used, and I have tried a few.

It even has an option for "automatic language detector" I used it once since I couldn't determine what language the avi was talking - it told me what it was in 1 sentance... and it didn't take very long to figure it out. I then set the translator to that language and viola. communication.

Wow! Guess I'm behind the times in the latest in translators! Thanks for those recommendations and I appreciate you asking the question, Eveline!

I also like X-Lang. It does cost money, however...Simbolic and Hank's Universal Translator are free.

(I still haven't tried the UT, but I hear it does a good job).

Is Hanks the one you are standing around and a blue prompt box will drop down asking you something about your language? I was always scared to click on it.

The biggest problem with most translators is that so many of us are bad spellers or are sloppy with accents, umlauts, tildes and such.

You choose your own language, then everything is translated to that language for you.

Just to ask - don't they all plug into the same google translation engine?

All popular translators use google translation engine.
Free translator - Simbolic has not many fatures and sometimes is not very useful. Commercial translators are different in their features and prices. Honest comparision was made by Lalwende Leakey - Q-Translator creator.
Q-Translator has most features. AF Translator (made by me) has similar features as others and has lowest price.

Do any translate from/to swedish?

Translators have a hard time with acronyms and slang.

I speak french as a second lang and the way they sometimes write it, translators won't understand.

As any language nerd knows, those computer translators kind of suck.
To the average joe they seem alright but a true language nerd knows better...
The best way to make sure a translator works well is to write what you want to say Exactly as it should be -
C'est quoi instead of c koi
going to instead of gonna...

I haven' ? the t has l' had; Opportunity even the need d' of translator for enough d' to use; Interval. And at this time it made a rather terrible work.

No, you cant eat the swimming pool.

All google engine based translators translate from/to swedish. For example AF Translator, Q-Translator, X-LANG...
Free: Simbolic Translator translates from/to swedish too.

my hovercraft is full of eels...

none of the translators do a very good job with japanese.

God, ain't that the truth! If murder were possible in sl, I would be in jail now for killing a certain Marseillais who tried my patience to the limits.

I have all the translators---all of them. Simbolic, X-Lang, Universal, and the new Q-Translator (used to be Quetil). And I run them simultaneously at least part of the time. Simbolic translates from French more clearly than the others do, across the boards...can't tell you why, but I have been stopped dead in my tracks laughing at some of the things that come out of the other translators. Simbolic is not always spot on, but it comes the closest.

I just got a copy of Q-Trans to user test. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

well the simbolic and babbler do not.. maybe I have an old version... but mine doesn't

Version 2 of Simbolic translates from/to Swedish.

It is not true the long established translators within SL are the best.
It's not because all translators use same external translation service that they give same results.

Here you will find a benchmark of current translators of SL.
Following letters will be used to indicates the different translators.

A: AF Pro 1.1
M: MH 3.6
Q: Q-Translator v0.21
S: Simbolic 2.0
U: UT v10
X: X-LANG 4.0

I developed Q-Translator, if you think I am not objective, make your own assessments ;)

== AUTO DETECT LANGUAGE (OTHERS) ==
Native Language set to English
Foreign Language set to French
Auto detect language: on

Someone says : hallo, wie geht's?
S -> hallo, wie geht's?
U -> don't have auto detect language feature
A,M,Q,X -> hello, how are you?

Simbolic fails because cause it doesn't have auto detect language feature.
UT needs to associate a language to each avatars before translating.
AF, MH, Q-Translator, X-LANG correctly translate the sentence from German to English.

== AUTO DETECT LANGUAGE (ME) ==
Native Language set to English
Foreign Language set to French
Auto detect language: on

You say : hallo, wie geht's?
M,S,U,X -> hallo, wie geht's?
A,Q -> bonjour, comment ça va?

UT, Simbolic fails because they don't have auto detect language feature.
X-LANG, MH fail because auto detect language is restricted to others only.
Q-Translator, AF correctly translate the sentence from German to French.

== MAKING TYPO ERRORS ==
Native Language set to English
Foreign Language set to French

You say : sometmes when it is laate, I maje some typo erors
A,M,S,X -> sometmes quand il est laate, je maje certains typo erors.
U -> sometmes quand c'est laate, maje d'I quelques erors de typo.
Q -> parfois, quand il est tard, j'ai fait quelques erreurs de typo.

AF, MH, UT, Simbolic, X-LANG fail in translation cause they don't spellcheck before translation
Q-Translator spellcheck before translating and use this sentence "sometimes when it is late, I made some typo errors" to translate

== TRANSLATION INTO ARABIC OR HEBREW ==
Native Language set to Arabic
Foreign Language set to English

Someone says: does this have any meaning ?
U -> don't support Arabic
A,M,S,X -> ؟ىنعم يأ اذهل له
Q -> هل لهذا أي معنى؟
UT don't support Arabic and Hebrew
X-LANG, AF, MH, Simbolic fail cause they present wrongly Arabic and Hebrew from left to right instead of right to left.
Q-Translator is the only translator that really support 34 languages, all others just support only 32 languages.

== SOMEONE IS ALREADY USING YOUR NATIVE LANGUAGE ==
Native Language set to English
Foreign Language set to French
Auto detect language: on

Someone says: I already speek in english
A,M,S,U,X -> I already speek in english
Q -> don't translate anything

AF, MH, Simbolic, UT, X-LANG add spam cause they don't detect original sentence is allready into your native language.
Q-Translator correctly detects it and don't show any translation.

== TRANSLATION IS SAME AS ORIGINAL SENTENCE ==
Native Language set to English
Foreign Language set to French

Someone says: ";)" or "http://www.secondlife.com " or "1+1=2"
M,S,U,X -> repeat original sentence
Q,A -> don't translate anything

MH, Simbolic, UT, X-LANG add spam cause they don't detect translation is same as original sentence
AF, Q-Translator correctly detect it and don't show any translation

== USING EMOTE /ME ==
You say : /me is going to sleep
M,S,X -> Lalwende Leakey / me va dormir
U -> je je vais dormir
Q,A -> Lalwende Leakey va dormir

X-LANG, MH, Symbolic don't detect emote and try to translate "/me" as part of originale sentence
AF, Q-Translator detects emote and thus correctly translate the sentence

== SOMEONE USE A SPAMMY GESTURE ==
Native Language set to English
Foreign Language set to French
Auto detect language: on
Someone says:
/\
__/__\__
(( ^;^ ))
)) ((
. )) -=- (( .
/ .| .... |. \
\_|_) || (_|_/
/o (o) o\
/' ===== '\
/' ===== '\
Bonne Année !!!

M,S,U,X -> A lot of useless and spammy messages
Q,A -> Happy New Year !!!

MH, Simbolic, UT, X-LANG don't have anti spam functions
AF, Q-Translator have anti spam functions

== USE TRANSLATORS IN A NO SCRIPT AREA ==
S,M,X -> simply wont give any translation
A,Q,U -> will continue to work

MH, Symbolic, X-LANG don't don't work in no-script area
AF, Q-Translator, UT work in no-script area

And well I didn't spoke of the tools that can enhance your languages experiences as Mono & Multi-Lingual Dictionaries , Wikipedia Search...

I guess they are as good as automated translations can be. (Thanks god for that - who would need human translators if that wasn't the case.) I use Simbolic too - usually on Help Island to bridge the gap between me encountering a newbie with no knowlegde of English and the appropriate mentor popping in. If you instruct the person to pay attention to spelling and write as you would talk to a 5 years old the translators actually do work.

Are any of these things open source? Anything else is utterly useless for my purposes, and I'm not all that eager to reinvent the wheel--apparently for at least the 7th time--of backending Google translation to LSL.