Language Translators Redux

I've tried the free versions of Simbolic, Babbler, and Universal language translators, and none will work consistently for me. I'm considering purchasing one now, but since I don't understand why the others are not working, I'm a little afraid to drop the chunk of cash needed. So I ask...

Has anyone used the Universal Translator v7 or the Multi-Lingo Translator V7.0(French/German/Italian)? Do they translate? Are there problems inherent in them?

I've read the blurbs on the SL Exchange, but some real (second) life input would be wonderful!

Thank you!!!

My understanding is that they all use Babelfish...so they will all perform about the same.

However, there are differences in the user interfaces.

The translator that I used, The Babbler, has stopped working and has been taken off SL Exchange

If you click Babbler's "help" button, it takes you to some Google site, not the page that it used to go to.

I don't know whether Babbler's problems are because of changes in SL breaking it, or if the maker stopped supporting it, or what...but I really miss mine, and I wish the product would reappear!

No wonder mine isn't working now...thought I was doing something wrong.

I resurrected my Universal Translator and am now selling it in-world for a nominal fee. I had dabbled with releasing a free translator, but decided to go the commercial route so I could put more development time into it. I know that the Babbler is on hiatus, and there are several others out there that are commercial.

All of the translators use some form of online machine translation, or have some hook into some outworld translation system. The inworld scripting engine just isn't powerful to do all that.

What differentiates my system from all of the others is that mine is designed to be a truly "universal" system in that you don't have to do anything to make it work other than speak in your native language. There is no need for each person to wear their own translator, nor is there a need for people to specify what language they speak. It just works automatically.

man i so wish it was all dialed-in.
i have a really cool japanese neighbor, and he barely knows english, and i know NO japanese. he's always popping by but all we end up doing is smiling. and gesturing.
funny guy too. he sailed his boat across my land one day.

There is a new freebie translator available called "Simbolic". Do a search for "Simboli" for the landmark.

It works pretty well, but it will not translate multiple avatars/languages simultaneously, and it only does 6 languages (English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Italian).

I also found this non-free one on SL Exchange. It seems to have great reviews. I'm going to get one and try it out. http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=715183

I use the UT v7 - it is best one out there that I have tried.

After so-so results from the Babbler, I started using one called talkTec. I've been very happy with it. It translates English, two dialects of Chinese, Russian, Korean, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, Dutch and Greek. No complaints from me on this one at all.

Welcome back, Hank!

For the record, I've used Hank's universal translator in the past, and it's worked fantastic for me

So after several months of development and success, I've released my translator as DonationWare (i.e. it's FREE and I just ask for donations if people are willing). You can pick one up inworld, on SLExchange, or OnRez, or just ask someone with one to click the "Give Copy" button to receive a free copy. Enjoy!

Just search for "Universal Translator" inworld or on one of the shopping sites.

most of the translators dont work for japanese...
well they do in a way ... but they dont take into account the grammatical differences and end up translating nonsense most of the time...

tip to getting better translations when trying to communicate in japanese...
dont use euphemisms...
dont use slang
stick to very simple and grammatically correct sentence structure
keep your sentences as short as possible.

then not too much will be lost in translation.

I'm going to try Hank's gadget...

I bought the X-Lang translator, which does 20 languages. Only one at a time, unfortunately, which makes talking to an Italian avatar and a Portuguese one at the same time difficult.

Other than that, I recommend X-Lang. It works much better than the free Simbolic translator I mentioned earlier in this thread.

What I tried to do with my Universal Translator was to take a different take on translation. I wanted one that would not require any setup or interaction other than speaking naturally as if there was no translator at all. (Think Start Trek Universal Translator or Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy Babelfish)

What mine does is to figure out what language everyone is speaking (using manual input, Google language detection, and/or using SL client install language in the next release of the official client). I then take a bit of publicly spoken chat and figure out who needs a translation if they are speaking a different language.

I try to keep down on chat spam by only sending out translations via private IM, so that people only receive translations that are meant for their language.

I use Google translation API because it is technically reliable, and supports many different language pairs though some would dispute its accuracy.

Some problems that still occur are...

1. Machine translation is notoriously imperfect, but gets the job done if everyone speaks simply and tries to understand each other. People also use slang, misspell, or don't use complete sentences. This makes it a challenge to get a good translation.
2. There is an option in my translator to "parrot" back to you what translations of your chat are being sent to other people. Some people interpret this as chat spam, so this option is off by default. Others like it because they can double-check that their translation was what they meant to say.
3. Very busy simulators make scripts run slowly, so translations can become out of sync with live chat. This is remedied by having multiple people wearing the translator so that they all work in concert or in parallel (there is a secure, back-channel of communication between multiple translators).
4. Some people just get plain angry when they seen their chat translated, for whatever reason being it personal or cultural. I toyed around with opt-in and opt-out mechanisms for people in the area (so they could say whether they wanted to be translated or not), but that only ended up making it more complicated to use or just made people think of these messages as spam in of themselves.

I seem to recall a requested feature of the scripting language being the detection of the user's viewer localization selection. Is that happening soon?

I use UT V7 a lot - mostly for Spanish and French, with a little German and Dutch.

I've been in a RP situation with a Spanish community for a few months now, and we seems to get by without any major misunderstandings. With the RP, the conversations are continuous and detailed. It works.
Sometimes the machine translations are hilarious.
On top of that, slang and typos trip the thing up.

In chat lag situations, the thing sometimes picks up the chat of others and spouts it as mine.


I'll try Hank's device.

I generally use UT V7 in a situation where I can set all avatars as a single language. I think that there is a bug/feature in it when I try to set selected avatars to a different language.

UT does use a number of websites for translation via a proxy or proxies. I do see it switching websites when loads are high. It claims to give good response times as their server caches common phrases rather than passing everything to the third-party translation sites.

My understanding is that Babbler was totally dependent on using third party sites. It ran into trouble when it got blocked by some sites because of the load it was imposing on them.



UT V7 has a 'bilingual' feature in which your chat is output both in your original language and as the translation into a language selected by channel number.
I don't use that feature. That can be hell when others use it.
My translator sees their original chat and translates it.
Then it sees their translator's output and translates that under the presumption that the text is that set for ALL avatars.

Then chat lag sets in and somebody's UT V7 rebroadcasts chat or another translator's output - which gets 'translated' by my UT again
I've grown accustomed to scan the lines scrolling up the screen and picking up on the initial translation, sometimes ignoring 3 or 4 redundant lines.

That's already implemented in the released SL server and the release candidate of the SL viewer. Once the RC of the SL viewer is the official viewer, then it be reliable.

Yeah; Babbler used Yahoo pipes to do screen scraping of various translation sites. I use the Google Translation API, so I don't get blocked since it's an official API.

Somehow I had gotten a Babbler that shouted embarrassing things at random intervals. I don't know if someone messed with it or if they just did that anyway.

Distrusting in world translators after that I started just keeping the Babblefish site up when in a non- English area. It's a bit slower with my having to copy and paste like mad, but I'm told it works well enough to be understood. I now have enough computer power to have two pages open -- one for Portuguese (or whatever) to English and the other for English to Portuguese which I hope will speed things up if I ever need to use it again.

[Edit: Good grief. I didn't notice how old this thread was.]

Wow, that sucks that someone would make a translator that did that. I can certify that my translator does nothing of the sort, only passes your text to Google and then back.

New release of the Universal Translator. Couple of bug fixes, supports 11 additional languages, reverses Arabic and Hebrew languages to display properly in SL (since SL doesn't support R>L display of languages).

I'd like to make it so that people can "opt-out" of being translated (since some people seem to sometimes get offended that they are being translated, for some reason), but I haven't come up with a good method that doesn't add complexity or additional "spam" or dialogs. Part of the problem is that you kinda need to translate everyone for translations to really work and people understand each other. If you have an opt-in method, then it's difficult to explain to people how to do it and besides you can always mute an object if you don't want to hear them. I've always settled on the idea to keep chatter down, route translations only when necessary, and that seems to keep people happy.

Any ideas?