Monday, October 20, 2008

Are you trying to learn a new language?

Google has another cool feature! They'll display a translated version of a web page, for example here is Why Homeschool: in Spanish, in German, in Russian and even in Chinese.

The cool thing is as you move the mouse over the screen they'll give the original text.

This is great for building up vocabulary. If you were learning a new language, say Hebrew, you could read a favorite story that you know well, like The Count of Monte Cristo, in Hebrew.


----------
Technorati tags: Google, translate

5 comments:

Luke Holzmann said...

That is way cool!

~Luke

Henry Cate said...

Yeah, it is a pretty cool feature.

Using the Guttenberg web site as an example seems to be a mistake. I have not been able to load The Count of Monte Cristo in Google Translate. I've tried a couple different options and always get: "The page you requested attempted to redirect to itself, which could cause an infinite loop."

I hope Google fixes this soon.

Anonymous said...

Ran across this: http://www.livemocha.com/

"The Social Way to Learn a Language.

Connect with native speakers around the world Improve at your own pace with free online lessons"

Sounds kind of like an internet update of the pen pal idea that I grew up with.

Bob Durtschi

Thought you might be interested.

Anonymous said...

Ran across this: http://www.livemocha.com/

"The Social Way to Learn a Language.

Connect with native speakers around the world Improve at your own pace with free online lessons"

Sounds kind of like an internet update of the pen pal idea that I grew up with.

BTW gutenberg.org does publish some books in the native language. For instance stories by Franz Kafka that you can download for free

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/k#a1735

Most of them are in German. Here is a Gutenberg "book" that is a sure cure for insomnia:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/745/745.txt




Bob Durtschi

Thought you might be interested.

Henry Cate said...

Thanks for the link to LiveMocha. It looks good.

And Bob, thanks for the info on Gutenberg. Are you speaking from personal experience on the cure for insomnia? :-)