Search the Net in Multiple Languages

Rainer Mauth

Information retrieval on the Internet can be a laborious task, not just because search engines often give you links that are completely out of context, but also because you may stumble on sites that are in a language you don't understand. The only way around this hassle is a multilingual search engine that automatically translates information into a language that you understand. Lernout&Hauspie, a leading speech and language technology developer, is planning to offer this service in mid-1998.

L&H acquired several translation companies, including Mendez Translations (Brussels, Belgium), Translingua (Bonn, Germany), and Lexitrans (Madrid, Spain), last year. L&H says it will be investing $35 million in the development of Internet-based translation services. "Internet-based services will employ both our speech technologies and our newly acquired translation capabilities," says Bob Kutnick, L& H's chief technology officer.

The L&H on-line translation services will include multilingual text retrieval based on machine translation, and automated submission and receipt of human translations via e-mail. The L&H search engine will, for example, translate a German-language search request into English, create an abstract of the retrieved documents, and translate the result back into German. According to Kutnick, the engine will also rank translated documents and build content clusters that make it easier for you to narrow down your interests. If you want an exact translation of your findings, you will be able to submit documents via e-mail.

The company plans to offer several levels of services (e.g., basic machine translation for a flat monthly fee, unlimited domain-specific m achine translation for a higher fee, and combined machine and human translation on a per-page basis). At press time, L&H had not set fees for these services. First supported language pairs will be English/Spanish and English/German (bidirectional). Bidirectional translations from English to French, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Japanese will follow, though L&H declined to say when they would be available.

The services will initially be targeted at certain business domains such as law and medicine. A prototype service will be launched by the end of the year.

---

Where to Find

Central Research Laboratories

Hayes, U.K.
Phone:    +44 181 848 9779
Fax:      +44 181 848 6565
Internet: 
http://www.crl.co.uk


Lernout&Hauspie

Wemmel, Belgium
Phone:    +32 2 456 0520
Fax:      +32 2 460 3834
Internet: 
http://www.lhs.com


Prime View International Co., Ltd.

Hsinchu, Taiwan
Phone:    +886 3 579 8599
Fax:      +886 3 578 8385

HotBYTEs
 - information on products covered or advertised in BYTE