Yandex.Translate

Yandex.Translate

Type of site	Statistical machine translation
Available in	95 languages, see features Interface: English, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian
Owner	Yandex
Website	translate.yandex.com (in English) translate.yandex.ru (in Russian) ceviri.yandex.com.tr (in Turkish) translate.yandex.ua (in Ukrainian)
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Optional
Launched	March 22, 2011 (2011-03-22)[1][2]
Current status	Active

Yandex.Translate (previously Yandex.Translation) is a web service provided by Yandex, intended for the translation of text or web pages into another language.

The service uses a self-learning statistical machine translation,^[3] developed by Yandex.^[4] The system constructs the dictionary of correspondences based on the analysis of millions of translated texts. In order to translate the text, the computer first compares it to a database of words. The computer then compares the text to the base language models, trying to determine the meaning of an expression in the context of the text.

The translation function obtained in the search results pages (on the button "Translate") appeared in 2009 and was carried out on the basis of PROMT.

Built in the Russian Wikipedia (translation from English into Russian).^[5][6]

In addition, the translator is built into the Yandex.Browser and automatically offers to translate text from supported foreign languages.

From September 2017 Yandex.Translator began the transition to the neural network for better translation.

Supported languages

Immediately after the launch of the translator in beta mode in the spring of 2011, it was only available in three languages — English, Russian and Ukrainian, with a limit of 10,000 characters.^[2]

As of October 2018, translation is available in 95 languages:

The translation direction is determined automatically. There is the possible translation of single words, whole texts and individual web pages. When you manually enter text, the system will prompt the pop-up window. There is the possibility of a two-window view of the translation and the original web pages. In addition to machine translation, there is also an accessible and complete English-Russian and Russian-English dictionary.^[7] There is an app for devices based on the iOS software,^[8] Windows Phone and Android. You can listen to the pronunciation of the translation and the original text (synthesised female voice).

Translations of sentences and words can be added to "Favorites" — the relevant section is below the input field.^[9]

Limitations

Yandex.Translate, like other automatic translation tools, has its limitations. This tool is intended to help the reader understand the general meaning of the text in a foreign language, but it does not provide accurate translations. According to the head of the service, Alexei Baitin, machine translation cannot be compared to a literary text.^[10]

Translation methodology

According to Arkady Volozh, the mechanism of Translate is as follows:^[11]

In addition to the free version for users, there is a commercial API online translator (free up to 10 million characters, then paid), designed primarily for the localization of sites of Internet shops and travel companies.^[12]

Features

• the mobile app for iOS is available for the transliteration of the Arabic, Armenian, Chinese (Pinyin), Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean and Persian languages;^[13]
• voice input;
• photo text translation feature (uses its own OCR (optical character recognition) technology) - in apps for mobile phones;^[14]
• the "Suggest translation" button (user patches to help improve the quality of machine translations);
• the "Favorites" section, where you can add translations of individual words and sentences;
• virtual keyboard.

See also

References

External links

• Yandex.Translate (in English)