Nearly a year ago Microsoft Translator unveiled an innovative new approach to translating web pages – one that enabled webmasters to bring the power of automatic machine translation to their sites with a snippet of java script. Unlike any other quick and easy solution out there at that time, the Microsoft Translator webpage widget integrated the translation experience into your site, and did not take your users away to a different translation site. Here is our friend Doug Thomas, in his inimitable style, explaining how the same powerful translation technology that powers translation inside Office can power your site.

The widget was a showcase for the broad set of APIs that we announced at the same time – APIs that have been used by many partners since that time to build a variety of software, services and sites. 

You all know that we were the first major translation service to provide a Haitian Creole system to help with the relief efforts underway in Haiti. One of the key motivators for us to build the system was Rick Engle, a fellow Microsoft professional who in his various endeavors to help with the relief efforts wanted to write an application to help the workers on the ground in Haiti. Since the time we added the language to our supported list, Rick went ahead and built the mobile app he had originally set out to build. You can find it here and it works for all languages that our service supports. The goal for having a full set of APIs (including HTTP, SOAP and AJAX) has always been to help developers like Rick focus on building great applications without a lot of heavy lifting, and we will continue to invest in that direction.

When we announced the availability of the widget and the APIs, we articulated our mission – to empower content providers, site owners and developers to deeply integrate translations into their sites and communities – truly bringing translations “anywhere” they are needed. As MIX 2010 approaches, we are working towards showcasing the next wave of our partner focused innovations.

We love MIX – where we get to meet developers that understand design, designers that understand strategy, strategists that understand technology… We get to discuss language technology with a German developer building software for an English company that serves customers from China to Brazil and we get to hear great feedback about what new browsers should we be testing our AJAX controls against. It’s a brilliant “mix” of creativity, ingenuity and passion and we are glad that we have made it “our” conference to share with the world what new things that we have been cooking up.

A bunch of us with be at MIX2010, and those of you that will be there can expect some goodies in the attendee bag from our team. Do mark your schedule for our session – it’s at Lagoon H on Monday at 2 PM. If you were at last year’s session – you know how much fun it is. Oh also – we have some heavy boxes we are lugging with us. 🙂

If you are not at MIX (this is going to be the most attended MIX ever!), do not worry. We will have plenty of information posted here and on our site about what we are announcing at MIX on Monday. In addition, we hope to have Doug back – explaining the latest and the greatest in translation soon after that. Stay tuned!

– Vikram Dendi, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Translator