14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s translation technology designed for integration into third-party web properties has evolved into Beta stage. The latest development milestone, announced at TechEd Europe is also synonymous with the Redmond company opening up access to the Microsoft Translator Widget and the Microsoft Translator AJAX API. Prior to TechEd Europe, both the Translator widget and the application programming interface were only available on an invitation-only basis.
As the two project graduated into Beta, this is no longer the case. Website owners that want to leverage Microsoft Translator technology into their online content can do so with no limitations as the Beta program is public. The software giant is essentially enabling all customers to generate either a snippet or application based on its machine translation technology. All that website owners need to do is visit the widget and AJAX API adoption portals, and start from there.
Vikram Dendi, from the Microsoft Translator team, highlighted a few points of interest from TechEd Europe: “Microsoft Translator APIs and the webpage widget are now in beta. Generate a translator widget for your webpage here, or use the AJAX API to further customize the translation experience. Detailed reference for the APIs on MSDN, Getting started guides for ASP.NET and PHP, Interactive SDK. 20+ languages supported by the service now (the latest 2 to be added in the next few days – Finnish and Bulgarian).”
For users unfamiliar with Microsoft Translator, the moniker is designed to reference the technology that powers translations for the Office productivity suite, including versions 2003, 2007, and 2010, but also for Bing, Live Toolbar, and the Windows Live Messenger bot. Microsoft is offering commercial licenses for the SOAP and HTTP APIs for free.
“We are also pleased to announce the availability of API (SOAP and HTTP) licensing terms for commercial applications. Feel free to email mtlic at microsoft.com for more information. While in beta, there is no charge for commercial use of the API. The widget and AJAX API continue to be free for commercial use under the standard terms of use,” Dendi added.