Google Translator Toolkit was an online

computer-assisted translation Computer-aided translation (CAT), also referred to as computer-assisted translation or computer-aided human translation (CAHT), is the use of software to assist a human translator in the translation process. The translation is created by a huma ...

tool A tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many animals use simple tools, only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates ba ...

(CAT)—a

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serv ...

designed to permit translators to edit the translations that

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a website interface, a mobile app for Android and iOS, and an API ...

automatically generates using its own and/or user-uploaded files of appropriate glossaries and

translation memory A translation memory (TM) is a database that stores "segments", which can be sentences, paragraphs or sentence-like units (headings, titles or elements in a list) that have previously been translated, in order to aid human translators. The translat ...

. With the Google Translator Toolkit, translators can organize their work and use shared translations, glossaries and translation memories. It allowed translators to upload and translate

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor, word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other pla ...

documents,

OpenDocument The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML files. It was developed wi ...

, RTF,

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

, text, and

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

articles. Google Translator Toolkit was supported by

, a web-based translation service. Google Translator Toolkit could be configured to automatically pre-translate uploaded documents using Google Translate. Google Translator Toolkit was released by

Google Inc. Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. I ...

on June 8, 2009. This product was expected to be named Google Translation Center, as had been announced in August 2008. However, the Google Translation Toolkit turned out to be a less ambitious product: "document rather than project-based, intended not as a process management package but simply another personal

tool". Originally the Google Translator Toolkit was meant to attract collaboratively-minded people, such as those who translate Wikipedia entries or material for

non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) or non-governmental organisation (see American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), spelling differences) is an organization that generally is formed independent from g ...

s. However, nowadays it is also more and more widely used in commercial translation projects. "The significance of the Google Translator Toolkit is its position as a fully online

software-as-a-service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is cons ...

(SaaS) that mainstreams some backend enterprise features and hitherto fringe innovations, presaging a radical change in how and by whom translation is performed". Translator Toolkit was shut down on December 4, 2019.

Source and target languages

Starting with only one source language—English—and 47 target languages in June 2009, Google Translator Toolkit supported 100,000 language pairs. Translator Toolkit could translate from 345 source languages into 345 target languages.

User interface

Google Translator Toolkit's user interface was available in 85 languages:

Workflow

The workflow of Google Translator Toolkit can be described as follows. First, users upload a file from their desktop or enter a URL of a web page or Wikipedia article that they want to translate. Google Translator Toolkit automatically 'pretranslates' the document. It divides the document into segments, usually sentences, headers, or bullets. Next, it searches all available translation databases for previous human translations of each segment. If any previous human translations of the segment exist, Google Translator Toolkit picks the highest-ranked search result and 'pretranslates' the segment with that translation. If no previous human translation of the segment exists, it uses machine translation to produce an 'automatic translation' for the segment, without intervention from human translators. Users can then work on reviewing and improving the automatic translation. They can click on the sentence and fix a translation, or they can use Google‘s translation tools to help them translate by clicking the "Show toolkit" button. By using the toolkit, they can view translations previously entered by other users in the "Translation search results" tab, or use the "Dictionary" tab to search for the right translations for hard-to-find words. In addition, translators can use features like custom, multi-lingual glossaries and view the machine translation for reference. They can also share their translations with their friends by clicking the "Share" button and inviting them to help edit or view their translations. When they are finished, they can download the translation to their desktop. For Wikipedia articles, they can easily publish back to the source pages.

API

Google Translator Toolkit used to provide an

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

which was restricted to approved users only.

References

{{Reflist Translator Toolkit Translation databases