WebServices/translation

Frengly

Frengly is a free and simple web service that offers translations between twenty-five different languages.

What it can do

Frengly allows for the translating of text between various languages.

Use in classrooms

Teachers:

Improve communication within classes, especially if a common language is not shared.
Teaching materials available to various audiences despite language barriers.

Students

Have notes and assignments translated to their native tongue.
Learning language aid.

Effectiveness/Workflow

Teacher creates lesson package for students in preferred language.
Students view the lesson plan and highlight with their mouse any text they do not understand.
Right-click mouse and translation options appear, offering 25 different languages. Students select one and the highlighted text is translated.
If a certain language is used often, students can right-click and go to “options” and set a commonly-used language.
An “automatically translate” option will have all lesson packages and text translated to the designated language without the user prompting.

Endpoint

From a computer or any device accessing Sugar Labs, a user (teacher or student) requests a selection of text to be updated by highlighting and specifying the new language. Frengly’s Translation Engine returns the translated text in place of the original text. Accessing the Frengly Translation Engine

http://syslang.com?src=fr&dest=en&text=Bonjour+monsieur&email=xxx&password=xxx

src: source language to translate from
dest: destination language to translate to
text: a piece of text you want to translate
email: frengly account email, entered during registration (use username for older accounts)
password: frengly account password
outformat: format of the response [xml/json], not mandatory- default is xml

Technical challenges

Implementation of SugarLabs to interface with Frengly.
Bandwidth from Frengly server.
Speed of ISP at user’s end.
Proper Java runtime engine loaded at the Endpoint that requires Frengly server.
Automatic translate option- user preference varies.
User may prefer the option on only set specific pages instead of all.
Whether automatic translate option will run on specified account or specified computer.
Disabling option on specific pages.
Translated language same for all pages or varied.