The fact that Google has added Turkish to its automatic translation service means that Turkish Internet users can see Internet pages and articles from around 40 different languages in Turkish.

All one has to do is to go to translate.google.com.tr, enter a website address or an article into the translation box, and then view an approximate Turkish translation.

Because the translation is automatic, the result can sometimes be meaningless, even misleading; however, the service at least allows users to get a sense of the content.

This service is also available for translation from Turkish to another language.

General idea, but no perfection

To give an example, the automatic translation of a headline from bianet’s Turkish homepage, which could be translated as “The municipality has 1,000 buses; the disabled can get on 10 of them”, reads thus in Google:

“City of the 1000 Bus Yes, disabled people can 10’una Bin”

Compare a “manual” translation of a paragraph within that bianet article with the automatic equivalent:

“Disabled people already live in isolation from public life. We do not want a school for the disabled; rather, we want everyone to be able to benefit equally from municipal services.”

The Google translation reads: "Disabled persons are already living at home isolated from life outside. We disabled school, not everyone can benefit equally from the municipal services and want."

Readers can make improvements

Turkish, like other Oghuz and Altaic language, uses agglutination and word order that can be very different form European languages, making automatic translation more difficult. The system offers readers the possibility to suggest a better translation.

The automatic translation service, which also includes Japanese, Greek and Finnish, allows one to translate from and into the language.

However, Google has limited its dictionary and “translated search” options to the most frequently used languages; Turkish is not among them.

Other translation websites

Apart from Google, there are other websites which automatically translate English content into Turkish; two of these are www.hemencevir.com and www.babilturk.com.

Babel Fish, which offers one of the most frequently used automatic translation services, does not offer Turkish yet. It has been taken over by Yahoo, and currently offers 11 languages for translation. (TK/AG)