Google Translator Toolkit

Google Translator Toolkit
Developer(s)Google Inc
Initial releaseJune 8, 2009
Websitetranslate.google.com/toolkit

Google Translator Toolkit was[1] an online computer-assisted translation tool (CAT)—a web application designed to permit translators to edit the translations that Google Translate automatically generated using its own and/or user-uploaded files of appropriate glossaries and translation memory. The toolkit was designed to let translators organize their work and use shared translations, glossaries and translation memories, and was compatible with Microsoft Word, HTML, and other formats.

Google Translator Toolkit by default used Google Translate to automatically pre-translate uploaded documents which translators could then improve.

Google Inc released Google Translator Toolkit on June 8, 2009.[2] 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 translation memory tool".[3]

Originally the Google Translator Toolkit was meant to attract collaboratively minded people, such as those who translate Wikipedia entries or material for non-governmental organizations. However, later it was used widely in commercial translation projects.[4]

A review of the toolkit in Multilingual noted: "The significance of the Google Translator Toolkit is its position as a fully online software-as-a-service (SaaS) that mainstreams some backend enterprise features and hitherto fringe innovations, presaging a radical change in how and by whom the translation is performed".[4]

Translator Toolkit was shut down on December 4, 2019.[5]

  1. ^ "Google Translator Toolkit Has Shut Down - Google Help". support.google.com. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  2. ^ "Translating the world's information with Google Translator Toolkit". Google. Retrieved 2012-02-02.
  3. ^ Garcia, I.; Stevenson, V. "Google Translator Toolkit. Free web-based translation memory for the masses". Multilingual (September 2009): 16–19.
  4. ^ a b Garcia, I.; Stevenson, V. "Google Translator Toolkit. Free web-based translation memory for the masses". Multilingual (September 2009): 16–19.
  5. ^ "Google Translator Toolkit Has Shut Down". Google Inc. Retrieved 2019-12-05.