With the introduction of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 on August 27, 2008, Microsoft has evolved the Activities of Beta 1 into the a tad more pretentious Accelerators. The feature is designed to streamline the navigation process for common tasks such as sending an email, mapping a direction, or even translating words. Essentially, Microsoft has made the process of copying and pasting information while jumping from one website to another redundant, by enabling easy access to online services used on a regular basis. One example is the Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 machine translation Accelerator.

 

"This is great news for users of translation services, because IE8 incorporates translation directly into your browsing experience! No need to cut and paste text from the site you are viewing into our landing page. You now have ready access to the service – from any page you visit! Now you can simply select some text and then click on the blue Accelerators icon. With the "Translate with Windows Live" Accelerator in Internet Explorer 8, you can get an in-place translation of the selected text displayed directly on the page," revealed a member of the MSR-MT team.

 

With this example of functionality, the Microsoft Research Machine Translation team has in fact extended its reach well beyond Windows Live Translator and the Windows Live Messenger Translator bot, into Internet Explorer. All that end users have to do is simply select a portion of text they wish to have translated, then click the blue Accelerators icon and hover the mouse over the Translate with Windows Live option. In this context the translation of the selected text will be performed in a pop-up box. Users will need to navigate to a Windows Live Translator page only if they actually click the Translate with Windows Live option.

 

In addition, the MSR-MT team indicated that "Without selecting any text, right-click anywhere in the page and click on the menu item. Your web page will be directed to the bilingual viewer, and begin to be translated. Select a hyperlink, right click to invoke the menu and click on 'Translate with Windows Live'. The hyperlinked target page will be directed to the bilingual viewer, and begin to be translated."

 

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is available for download here.