For the first time, non-English speaking Web surfers can translate information on the predominantly English speaking Web in real time. The new free service, provided on Digital AltaVista Search service, also gives English-only Web surfers the ability to understand information in five of the worlds most popular languages. The AltaVista Web Translation Service provides nearly complete translation results, equipping the end-user with a greater comprehension of foreign information. With a click of the mouse, users can instantly translate a search query, Web page or section of text, such as an email, by cutting and pasting the text.
Users can also translate their own query and send the translation to the search engine.
The technology works best when the text is grammatically correct and does not use too many idioms, however, users can usually understand the meaning of even a poorly written document. Even if you have, you may have missed a really cool new feature they slipped in about a couple of weeks ago. If you click there, you can translate the web page you just found into several different languages. Computerized translations often miss subtle meanings of words and don't accurately present many common sayings. The AltaVista Translation Assistant provides you with a tool to translate a grammatically correct document into something comprehensible, but not perfect.