Wikislate – technical translations using Wikipedia

Ben sent us a nifty translation tool that uses Wikipedia’s alternate language links as its result set.

The “Hack” is essentially using Wikipedia’s inter-wiki links (the ones on the bottom of the navigation bar) for translation of nouns.

I used to do it manually all the time for mathematical terms. Say for example, that I’d like to know the German word for the math term “Convergence”, I go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergence and then click on the Deutsch link to get the German version of that page – Konvergenz

My tool is doing just that in code, easing the process.

It seems to work especially well for technical terms that are normally difficult to translate correctly. Where a typical automated translator might return the literal translation of a word, the Wikipedia community aims to link together pages about the same subject, which, in theory, should make Wikislate produce better results.

Wikislate