Bing Gains Instant Translation Abilities

However it fares in other respects, it may not be long before Bing becomes the favorite search engine of foreign language students.  Microsoft Translator now provides Instant Answers through Bing, and the system works in an intuitive and impressive manner.

Just head to Bing.com and type whatever translation-related phrase comes to mind.  As an animal lover, your humble author tried queries including [translate dog to spanish], [dog in french], [what's dog in german], [translate dog from english], and [translate dog].  Bing made sense of them all, returning correct terms above the standard lists of search results.

 

Google’s main engine, meanwhile, had luck with just the first phrase in that list, and somehow connected the last one to Italian and hot dogs.

Google Translate exists as a separate and very useful tool, of course.  And for fairness’s sake, I have to admit that I’m not familiar enough with non-English languages to test the accuracy of Bing’s translations on a significant scale.

But as Lane Rau wrote on the Microsoft Translator Official Team Blog, "Instant translation is another way that Bing helps you complete tasks faster by presenting better organized and more relevant content."