Logos Multilingual Portal

22 - Other features of Google - part one

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"The dream, indeed, is so intimately connected with verbal expression that Ferenczi justly remarks that every tongue has its own dream-language. A dream is, as a rule, not to be translated into other languages"1.

In this unit we are going to examine other features of the Google search engine that make the translator’s work easier, improving her documentation capabilities. One should remember that, over time, the online patrimony is more and more important, because the number of texts in the net is dramatically increased every day.

Since the search engine is the main tool used by all users for all searches, a very useful accessory is the toolbar, the bar where all the tools of the application are synthesized, that can be added to the page of the navigator, Explorer for example. The presence of the Google toolbar allows to search through Google without going to the Google site, straight from the page you are on, regardless the page.

To download the bar, you must go to the page http://toolbar.google.com, and choose in the "Choose Your Language and Download" box the language in which you prefer to have the toolbar. Not all languages are available, but the choice is somewhat rich. There is even the "hacker" language, the one of the computer chiampions, choosing which you are presented with the desolating (for people who doesn’t understand, like me) view of this page:

+EH GO09LE +OOlB@r 1NtEGr@+E5 TeH WoRLd'$ B35t w38 $3@RCH 1n+O IN+ERnet exPL0rEr (iE). $E@rCh th3 weB U$1NG 9OOGL3 8Y +Yp1ng +erm5 1NT0 4 534rCH B0X0R 1n 1e'S toOLB4R @R34. @nD, 4cC355 0UR 9RE@+ 4dV@NceD W3B Ph34tUr3S WIth 4 51n9l3 CL1CK

5y$teM R3kw1REMEN+5* M$ W1nd0z3

* M$ IE v. 5 o l83r

$3|_3ct ur OS

Windows NT/2000/XP

Windows 95/98/ME

1n5+4Ll +h3 90OGL3 +OOLb4R

8| 3|\|5t41|\|6 7]-[3 g00g13 t3\/\/184r j00 4g33 2 48|d3 8| R Terms of Use.

C10$3 411 ( )743|? |3|?()\/\/$3|? \/\/||\|d0w$ |33f0|?3 Pr0c33d1|\|g!

h01D 1t: yA |\|33d JavaScript 0n 2 ph1n15h 1nZt@ll|n6. If y0 s33 d1s, 1t A1|\|t. 2 t(_)r|\| 1t 0N, |-|1t "Internet Options" phRo|\/| dA "Tools" |\/|3n(_) 1N y@ 8R0|/\|z3r. d3n |-| t dA "Security" -|-a8. 53t 1t t0 "Medium" 0r z|\/|@113R, 0r t(_)r|\| "Active Scripting" 0n 1|\| d@ "Custom Settings" 80x. ¶£z Ç£oZ & |230¶3|\| IE åƒ+3|2 |V|@|<1|\| d33z Ç[-]@|\|63z.

i 4GR33 2 TEH T3RMZ 0F US3! - iN5Tall T3h Google +0olB@r

(c)2003 GoogleOne should remember that the choice of the preferred language doesn’t necessarily coincide with the choice of the Google national site you prefer. We’ll see then, speaking of the options, that it is possible, for example, having the toolbar in English and choosing the French national site of Google www.google.fr, .Having chosen the language, just click on "Download Google Toolbar", and the transfer of the file that will install the bar starts. After the download, clicking on "open" you start the installation. One of the question you are asked is "Please select a Google site to use for your searches".As you see, he choice of the national site of reference is independent of the language chosen for the toolbar. Moreover, as I have shown in the previous units, any national setting can be "forced" using the "Language Tools" page.La The bar looks like this:
Starting from the left, here are the main features: the first box is a pull-down menu (those that, clicking on them, open sliding down like Venician blinds being lowered) and has different options. The first one sends you to the "Google Home Page" and is useful fir example when you need the "Language Tools". As a matter of fact, the "Language tools" option sometimes doesn’t appear on the search page, o to get to that ling you may go to the home page, where it is always present.The second options concerns the "Advanced Search", and we have already dealt with it in the previous units. It is used to set more swift search criteria than the simple search, hat imply the presence of given strings in the searched sites, or the absence of given strings, the presence of words in the indicated sequence or in random order; the presence of file of a given format (for example you might request only sites in format .doc, or .xls, or in pre-paged format .pdf), or in the same way exclude file in given formats; searching only the pages, say, edited less than a year ago, six months or three months; you can specify a time span within which numbers must be present: for example, if I use the option "Return web pages containing numbers between 1958 and 1968", I get only results that have within them a number within this interval (therefore, in this case, referred mostly to events in that decade); you can specify in what part of the page the key words you indicated must be: if in the title, in the body of the text or elsewhere; finally, you can specify in what domain the information must be searched: n this field the user is supposed to write, for example, «.".edu" to search only sites with this extension, or even a complete site, or example "www.logos.it".from the pull-down menu the second option is "Google Images", and this is also potentially very useful to translators. Through this option you get to the Google Image Search page (http://www.google.com/imghp). If you insert here a word or string, you get as a result images that are pertinent with that word. f, for example, I insert "badger", I get as a result mostly photos of the mammal in question, that I can recognize and nominate in my own language, If this is different from the one I made the search in. In face of this photo
it is easy to solve problems without dictionaries and be certain of what you are speaking of.

Notice that this translation method eludes the normal translation process schemata. In this case, as a matter of fact, it is not the linguistic sign to be translated; you have an icon (not needing any semantic translation but for a sightless) that each speaker interprets (but we know that the degree of interpretability of icons is much lower than the one of symbols) and, if needed, translates in her mother tongue words. In principle, if all translations could be made in this way, the degree of arbitrariness of translation choices would be very low, But of course that is impossible because, first, not all words are referable to icons (just think of abstract words, or articles or prepositions) and, moreover, texts are not made of pure lexicon, but also of combinations of words.As you see, technology offers new ways of translating as well.

In the next unit we’ll go on with this exam of the Google Toolbar.

 

Bibliographical references

ÈKO - SAIT O RASTENIJAH http://www.ekohome.narod.ru/familly/rosaceae.htm

FREUD SIGMUND, L’interpretazione dei sogni, in Opere, vol. 3, Torino, Boringhieri, a cura di C. L. Musatti, 1966.

FREUD SIGMUND, The Interpretation Of Dreams, translated by A. A. Brill, London, G. Allen & company, 1913.

GOOGLE, available in the world wide web at the address http://www.google.com/, consulted 7 April 2004.

http://brokgauz.academic.ru/misc/brokgauz.nsf/ByID/NT0000176E


1 Freud 1900: 95.


 



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