language

Those of you who'd like to read Facebook pages written in a foreign language now have a way to translate posts and comments into your native tongue.

Using the translation tools of Microsoft's Bing, the social-networking site is now offering an inline tool that will translate posts made on public Facebook pages into the language indicated in your profile.

As described by the company, public pages written in a different language will display a "Translate" link next to each post or comment. Clicking on that link converts the post into your own language. Clicking on the &… Read more

Smartphones may offer a smarter way to gather data in cognitive research, according to a paper in this week's journal PLoS ONE.

Until recently, when studying human behavior cognitive psychologists--who examine such things as how people think, remember, and perceive the world around them--have relied on volunteers who come to research facilities.

Collecting data solely from this sort of cohort could highly skew resulting data; for one, the number of people who volunteer their time tends to be smaller in scale, and by studying only the types of people who volunteer for this kind of research, cognitive psychologists … Read more

Google Translate is a simple, versatile tool that supports more than 50 languages, offers an SMS translator, and speaks some of your translations aloud.

Google Translate is incredibly simple to use. Just select your input and output languages, then type in your text. You can also set the app to automatically detect your input language for even faster results. To quickly interchange your input and output languages, just hit the conveniently placed (center screen) arrow icon. That's it.

It's no secret that Google Translate performs a solid job translating, but what really makes it shine are the extra … Read more

Likasoft calls Polyglot 3000 an automatic language recognizer, which is an apt description of this specialized tool. It's similar to automatic translators in that it analyzes the language of text entries, but instead of translating the text, it identifies and displays the language, including confidence in the match expressed as a percentage. It handles more than 470 languages.

Polyglot 3000 has a very simple interface and an equally simple operation. It has a text entry field for typing or pasting text to identify, or you can load Unicode or ANSI text files directly into the program. It has but … Read more

I've always felt like Australians had their own language going on, what with all the Vegemite and Walkabouts and such, but now some Aussie researchers have set a few robots loose on the linguistic landscape. The result is that the Lingodroids have actually managed to create their own language. Using only their shared understanding of some apparently nonsense words, the Lingodroids more-or-less successfully communicated directions to each other and even created fairly accurate maps of their surroundings.

Here's the basic gist of how it works. The Lingodroids assign a randomly chosen syllable combination to name a specific location. … Read more

OS X supports a number of different languages, and either during installation or in the system preferences you can choose your default language in which to have the system display localized elements such as menu text and dialogue text. In addition to interface elements, Apple supports localization on some system files and folders, including the default folders in the home directory. This means that if you switch your system's language, the names Desktop, Movies, Pictures, Documents, and so on that are in your home directory should also be shown in the new language.

While this works for most people, … Read more

There seems to be no end to the variety of gadgets that the Windows Sidebar enables on the desktop in Vista and Windows 7. Language Translator for Windows Sidebar localizes the proven usefulness of Web-based translators on your desktop, with the flexibility of a gadget. Like most Windows gadgets, it's free.

Windows gadgets tend to be small by design, and at 260KB, Language Translator is no exception. Like other gadgets, it's as easy to manage as your screensaver or desktop background: right-click anywhere in the desktop and select Gadgets from the menu. The tool itself is a compact, … Read more

When you initially set up your Mac, you will be asked to select one of several supported languages as the default language to use. This will set the system-wide spell checker to the desired language, and also cue other applications such as Microsoft Office to set their languages accordingly at installation time, if supported.

The language setting will not only set the system's display language, but also set up the various spell checkers used in word-processing programs like TextEdit, Pages, and Safari. Though this is convenient, there may be times when in typing documents you will need to use … Read more

OS X and its included programs are fully localized to a variety of common languages, allowing for full translation of the OS to these languages right out of the box. Language preferences can be set up in the Language & Text system preferences if not done when the initial OS X setup assistant runs, and should work when the system is next started; however, sometimes odd problems may happen with the incorrect language showing in some situations.

Language support? Even if the system is set to a specific language, that language will only be used if support for it is … Read more