Translation through Wikipedia
June 9, 2007 – 9:49 amThere’s a new version of Wikislate up! read about it here
Here’s a small neat script that I coded yesterday in about 1.5 hours – Wikislate
The script was created to simplify a process that I’ve been using for some time. Being a math&cs student, I’ve acquired the unique mathematical-technical jargon (and I keep doing so).
The problem is that I live and study in Israel – in the Hebrew language. Given the fact that there’s a great English mathematical knowledge-base online (Wolfram is the first website that crosses my mind right now), I had to know the English equivalents of the Hebrew mathematical terms.
The method that I found was to load up the Hebrew Wikipedia page for the term, and then look for the English interwiki link – for the English version of the article.
Most of the time, I only had to read the title of the English page to know I was at the right place.
Yesterday night, after desperately trying to get asleep (my brain suddenly decided to start intensive thinking the night before an exam – took me 2 hours to get asleep) , I came up with the idea to code a quick and simple PHP script that will do the work for me, and act as my scientific terms dictionary. I had some spare ( I decided it was spare ) time, and the above code was the result of a quick coding session. As the code came along, I thought that incorporating Google’s “Did you mean” is a neat feature. So in case a term wasn’t found, it tries the Google search for it, just to get the “Did you mean” line for you 
I hope other people will find it useful. I might improve it, making it use shiny AJAX and maybe even have a db store the searched terms for autocompletion.
I have the intention to write a bit about how it was done (really fairly simple) – again, if there’s enough interest.
Enjoy, and please comment about it!
9 Responses to “Translation through Wikipedia”
Hi Ben!
I just got an email from someone wondering too about this idea of using Wikipedia for translations (http://elzr.com/posts/wikipedia-as-a-translator-of-nouns). I referenced him to your wikislate script and along the way I made a handy YubNub (http://yubnub.org/) command out of it, wikislate (http://yubnub.org/kernel/man?args=wikislate).
I’ts a neat, simple script you did, you know…
Cheers!
By elzr on Dec 19, 2007
Hi there,
I’ve been searching for a tool for using the language links within Wikipedia for doing translations.
Part of my job is translating stuff from English to other languages (Italian, German, etc). I’ve thought about coding it myself but then thought I’d google a bit and now elzr (http://elzr.com/posts/wikipedia-as-a-translator-of-nouns)
gave me your link. Very nice tool. I like it a lot.
I got a question. Is it possible to call the page with a link and give it the target language as a parameter?
Like http://wikislate.bonf.net/index.php?source=en&destination=it&term=Boy+scout
It would be easier for certain applications bc this way i have first find the language in the website…
But even with out this lil thing I think its a really useful tool for specialized translations.
What’s Wikipedia’s policy on stuff like that. Do they want/support external uses?
Cheers!
By JohannesK on Dec 19, 2007
@elzr: Thanks! YubNub seems like a cool/weird idea
@JohannesK: I’m glad you like the script. It is possible to implement your suggestion, quite simple actually.
) or anything else – it is then possible to create a new site using Wikipedia’s freely available database, and make the script even faster and more efficient!
About Wikipedia’s policy, frankly I don’t know. However, if they ever complain about bandwidth (yeah, right
By Ben on Dec 21, 2007
Hi, just writing to say thanks for this neat tool!
I used it for translating names of 50 European countries into 5 languages, and it took me not more than an hour. It probably saved me DAYS of dull work.
You’re the guy!
best regards from Poland
By Marcin on Jan 24, 2008
If I could suggest some improvements:
- make a selectable list of languages you wish to translate into
- copy to it’s own domain, add some preety graphics and let the world know!
By Marcin on Jan 24, 2008
hi there!
just to thank your wonderful script eheh, i’ve been thinking about that possibility, very helpful.
i guess you should do as marcin said, let the word know about your site!!
By serlui on Apr 14, 2008
Great job
quite good script
By linda on Aug 21, 2009
Hey, great job.
I had a a similar idea in my head for some time, and I’ve implemented a similar system to Wikislate. It relies on a slightly different approach, and on some fancier interface technology.
Take a look, if you will, and let me know what you think:
http://www.fredrocha.net/MemeMiner/
thanks!
fred
By Fred Rocha on Mar 18, 2010