Just hours after introducing a public DNS to make the web faster, Google rolled out a new tool that aims to make searching the web a little easier. Google also launched its own dictionary in its quest to offer information to the world.
Google added the translation tool to its Search options panel to make finding and reading content written in other languages easier. The tool opens the door to accessing information that searchers might not otherwise be able to understand.
“We’ve offered this feature in Google Translate for a while, but now we’re integrating it fully into Google search, making it easier for you to find and read results from pages across the web, even if they weren’t written in a language you speak,” Google Technical Lead Maureen Heymans and Google Product Manager Jeff Chin wrote in the company blog.
Google Goes Multilingual
Searchers can use Google Translate to search the web in another language. Users click “Show options” at the top of the search-results page and select “Translated search.” Google will algorithmically select the best language or languages to translate the search query into and then return the translated results from those pages. Google will even display results from multiple languages.
Heymans and Chin offered the example of searching for restaurant reviews in Antwerp, Belgium. If a vacationer wanted to find reviews or review sites beyond the ones available in English, for example, he or she would begin by selecting “Translated search.”
Google would automatically select the Belgian languages French and Dutch, translate the query into both languages, and then translate the results into English for easy reading. If users want to search specific languages, they can modify the languages in the panel above the results. Users can also display results for up to five languages at once and select from 51 languages to…