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Translation tools, translation by humans, differences

Accurate translation is important when people from different countries interact for trade or exchange of information. Though there are many online translation tools available, most are useful for translating a single word or phrase. For more complex tasks like legal, scientific or engineering documents, a qualified translator should be consulted. 

The online translation tools can be used to find the general meaning of a phrase. However, if a word has three different meanings in English, the translation tool will select the most popular meaning, which may not necessarily be correct in the context in which it is used. Use of these tools is not recommended for school or research projects where accuracy is important.

 Some of  popular online translation tools are:

1. Babelfish from Altavista  - allows translation from and to  a number of  popular languages like English, Spanish, German, Chinese.  Text to be translated has to pasted in the box provided and the translated version is available.

2. Google's Translation Tool - translate from English to French, German, Italian, Portuguese and vice versa. BETA version of  translation from/to Japanese, Korea, Russian, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified) and Chinese (traditional) available. Very slow for translating from Chinese, my computer usually stops working after I use this tool. Better for languages written in Roman Script. You can choose to translate text or a web page.

3. World Lingo -  the website offers online translation

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