language

Translating the Internet into every language is a massive undertaking, and one that machine translation isn't up to handling. Luis von Ahn is tackling the problem with Duolingo, a free language-learning service that doubles as a crowdsourced text translation platform.

Users follow a step-by-step instruction process to learn a language, and at the same time they are translating Web sites and other kinds of information available on the Internet.

The service has been in private beta, starting with lessons for English speakers to learn Spanish and German, and Spanish users to learn English. Von Ahn, the A. Nico Habermann … Read more

iTranslate Voice lets you speak to translate in 31 different languages offering excellent speech recognition so you don't even need to use the keyboard. Great for learning new languages or acting as your personal translator when traveling, this app has a great layout for quick translations on the fly.

iTranslate offers a clean intuitive interface that only requires a couple of steps to translate in the languages you want. Simply touch the gear icon (settings) in the upper-left corner, then choose your spoken language and the language you want to translate to. You also have options for having the … Read more

You've probably heard that immersion is the fastest and most comprehensive way to learn a new language. However, immersion is not an easy task when you don't live in a country where your target language is natively spoken. To help with this issue there's an awesome extension called Language Immersion for Chrome.

With this extension you can add as much or as little of a new language to your everyday Web surfing habits as you like. The extension supports most of the languages offered by Google Translate (roughly 64 of them), and can help you learn the … Read more

The highest court in the European Union issued a ruling yesterday that essentially declares programming languages are not copyrightable.

The European Court of Justice ruled in favor of World Programming Limited (WPL) over the SAS Institute, which developed the SAS System, an integrated set of programs that enables users to carry out data processing and analysis tasks.

WPL emulated these functionalities with its World Programming System to ensure that its platform would work the same way, meaning the same inputs would produce the same outputs.

Here are the most important parts of the ruling, according to the court judgment:

In … Read more

SayHi Translate is a surprisingly accurate voice translation app that could be the tool world travelers have been looking for quick translations. Using the app is easy. Simply touch the wrench icon to choose your language, then the language you want something translated to, then return to the main interface. From there you can either touch your language button to speak or touch the smaller keyboard icon to type a sentence and SayHi Translate will translate the sentence and speak it back to you (or whomever your trying to communicate with). It doesn't get everything right, but if you … Read more

Travel, work, or personal advancement are some of the primary reasons for wanting to pick up or brush up on a language other than your native one. For these purposes and more, Babbel's free language packs for mobile are a great place to start your efforts.

Babbel is an online language-learning company that offers French, Spanish, Italian, German, Swedish, Brazilian Portuguese, English, Dutch, Polish, Indonesian and Turkish. Impressive, huh? Here's how to get started:

Step 1: Pick a language and download the corresponding language pack for Android or iOS.

This How To will work with the Babbel Spanish pack for Android, … Read more

Siri Dictation on the new iPad, as well as the iPhone 4S, is fairly accurate a majority of the time. But, as with anything software-based (let alone in beta), sometimes mistakes are made. However, when those mistakes throw out some choice four-letter words, especially when kids are present, it's not going to make people happy.

Yesterday I was asked by a reader if it was possible to disable explicit language for Siri Dictation on the new iPad. So, I decided to make a video showing how easy it is to disable explicit language for Siri on both the iPad, … Read more

Google could be cooking up a new voice assistant designed to out-Siri Siri.

The company is said to have a new system in the works dubbed "Assistant" designed to help people complete tasks by voice. And if Google's plans come together, Assistant could debut in the fourth quarter, according to TechCrunch.

Citing information from a source, TechCrunch said on Friday that the search giant would control all of the layers involved in Assistant. But Google would let third-party developers tap into the system to create their own unique apps, a marked contrast from Apple's Siri, which … Read more

Foreign-language phrase books or dictionaries often only get you so far if you're a beginner trying to hold a conversation in your non-native language.

But a mobile app called Vocre aims to make such a conversation "as simple as record, review, and translate," according to Andrew Lauder, founder of MyLanguage, which created the app.

To get a conversation going, the app uses some of the same technology that powers Siri, Apple's voice assistant, as well as audio technology from a company called iSpeech. MyLanguage is also using a crowdsourcing model so that the translation technology gets … Read more