Another possible option is to look into what kind of API might be available to Microsoft Translator <a href="http://www.microsofttranslator.com/">http://www.microsofttranslator.com/</a> I know there must be something as this is called and used as a source of suggestions by Virtaal ( a PO editor produced by the makers of Pootle). fwolff over on #pootle might have some more info on how he implemented this in code. cjl <div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 8:44 AM, Aleksey Lim <<a href="mailto:alsroot@activitycentral.org">alsroot@activitycentral.org</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 06:26:33PM +0000, Aleksey Lim wrote: > Hi all! > > Starting from the recent times, translation[1] on Sugar IRC channels > stopped working properly (messages started being skipped). This feature > is disabled entirely for now, since missed IRC posts on translated channels > might lead to many confusions. > > Infrastructure Team is working on the problem to fix this issue > as soon as possible. Sorry for inconveniences. > > [1] <a href="http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Service/meeting/Usage#Multi-lingual_relaying" target="_blank">http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Service/meeting/Usage#Multi-lingual_relaying</a> The problem is that Sugar Labs infrastructure used Google translation API, but Google stopped providing translation API as a free (free-as-a-beer) service[1]. So need a replacement. In fact, the original problem is that Google API, as a free-as-a-beer solution that doesn't have, as an API, handles to accept contribution to improve the quality of translation or customize it for people needs, was used as a translation backend for Sugar Labs IRC channels (thanks to the author of these lines). Because, it is obvious that just translation is not the right final goal that should be taken within the Sugar Labs. The purpose should be to let people teach new languages, do it in cooperation with another people and contribute to the free (free-as-a-speech) database that might be reused by another learners. Obviously, using another, as a replacement of Google API, free-as-a-beer translation API is the wrong way to go. There is the Apertium[2] project that might be a good candidate to achieve goals mentioned above. Apertium is a free/open-source platform for developing rule-based machine translation systems. There are 28 language pairs [3] that are stated as stable in Apertium, and there are a bunch of them in development stage. It supports less languages than Google does but it might be the right basis to start, i.e., * Looks like our most need is en-es/es-en, Apertium can provide it right now; * Having a Web application, a la <a href="http://translate.sugarlabs.org" target="_blank">translate.sugarlabs.org</a>, we can accept contributions from the community to customize current language pairs and add new ones. The current plan is setting up en-es/es-en translation on Sugar IRC channels to let people try it. [1] <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/overview.html" target="_blank">http://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/overview.html</a> [2] <a href="http://www.apertium.org/" target="_blank">http://www.apertium.org/</a> [3] <a href="http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Main_Page" target="_blank">http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Main_Page</a> -- Aleksey _______________________________________________ Systems mailing list <a href="mailto:Systems@lists.sugarlabs.org">Systems@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/systems" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/systems</a> </blockquote></div>