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Seeing Google in other languages
Searching for non-English Web sites
Finding Web sites located in other countries
Translating Web sites
Finding a non-English version of Google Toolbar
The global Google has risen. Nobody will be unaffected for long. Google’s internationalism is a profound mission that seeks to provide every literate person with a friendly path into the information matrix. This chapter consolidates all Google language initiatives, some of which are also mentioned in other chapters.
More than other U.S.-based Internet portals, Google has extended itself deeper into non-English territory by recruiting the largest workforce in the world: volunteers. Call it distributed computing with brains. Anyone with proper language skills can participate to whatever extent they are able and willing. Even translating a single word gets you into the project. (More on this later in the chapter.)
Besides person power, Google employs machine translation for certain tasks, much as Lycos pioneered. The two-way interface for acquiring a rough machine translation — whereby you may paste text or have Google go get it — takes multilingual ease-of-use to the next level.
Google presents non-English content in three broad areas:
Interface: The familiar Google main pages can be displayed in dozens of languages.
Web pages: Google can limit a search to Web pages written in any of dozens of languages and even to sites residing in certain countries.
Ad hoc translating: Google is always ready to translate text that you enter, either through typing or posting.
This chapter walks you through each of these areas, and adds a section on finding the Google Toolbar in your favorite language.
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