pg 1
Users frequently use free machine translation on the web to understand texts coming from another language (often referred to as assimilation) or to publish a text into another language (dissemination). Moreover, they also use MT on the web to communicate instantly with other users in different languages through instant messaging. MT providers use the readily available bilingual data on the web to boost the performance of their engines in different language combinations. And finally, many language and translation teachers and students are using MT on the web to help their language learning as well as translation and post-editing strategies.
pg 2
Hutchins’ Compendium of translation software (2009) offers a thorough list of all MT online services available, product characteristics, language combinations and prices. He cites more than fifty MT services online free online MT providers constantly improve the service offered (for example by adding new language pairs) guaranteeing that the general interest in on-line MT services remains high. Surprisingly, users had a positive perception of online MT services when consulting information in another language, even though MT had sometimes “and adverse effect on their correctness” (Gaspari 2007:241).
pg 3 compares English-Spanish language engines Yahoo! Babelfish, Google Translate, Apertium and Microsoft Translator, two rule-based engines and two statistical-based engines (GT and BING)
pg 6
After briefly comparing four engines in the English to Spanish language combination using only four sentences, both statistical engines, Google Translate and Microsoft Bing Translator, provided more understandable translations than the rule-based Babelfish and Apertium. Bing Translator performed slightly better overall and it even offered a perfect translation with no errors for one of the proposed sentences.