Single character always english.

[magicalhobo87]

Hi,
I use this plugin for firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/
firefox/addon/9842) which uses the Google Translate API. But, I get
no results for a single character, and it seems to be a problem with
Google Translate, e.g.:

1. http://www.google.com/uds/samples/language/detect.html
2. Erase all but the first character
3. The result goes from "CHINESE_SIMPLIFIED ( reliable : 0.99952525)"
to "ENGLISH ( reliable : 0.9949426)"

Is this a known problem, and is there a way around it?

Thanks,
Sean.

[Jeremy Geerdes]

Machine translation is inherently inaccurate with shorter strings to
work with, and it will tend to be completely unreliable with single
characters. In my own experimentation, I have found that anything
shorter than three words can lead to very unpredictable results, and
even three words can sometimes go awry.

Jeremy R. Geerdes
Effective website design & development
Des Moines, IA

For more information or a project quote:
http://jgeerdes.home.mchsi.com
http://jgeerdes.blogspot.com
http://jgeerdes.wordpress.com
jgee...@mchsi.com

Unless otherwise noted, any price quotes contained within this
communication are given in US dollars.

If you're in the Des Moines, IA, area, check out Debra Heights
Wesleyan Church!

And check out my blog, Adventures in Web Development, at http://jgeerdes.blogspot.com
!

[magicalhobo87]

I'm not even talking about translation, just detection. The translate
sample at http://www.google.com/uds/samples/language/translate.html
returns what you would expect with a single character. It can't be
that hard to determine that a chinese character is not english...

On Nov 3, 4:18 am, Jeremy Geerdes <jrgeer...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Machine translation is inherently inaccurate with shorter strings to  
> work with, and it will tend to be completely unreliable with single  
> characters. In my own experimentation, I have found that anything  
> shorter than three words can lead to very unpredictable results, and  
> even three words can sometimes go awry.
>
> Jeremy R. Geerdes
> Effective website design & development
> Des Moines, IA
>
> For more information or a project quote:http://jgeerdes.home.mchsi.comhttp://jgeerdes.blogspot.comhttp://jgeerdes.wordpress.com

> jgeer...@mchsi.com

>
> Unless otherwise noted, any price quotes contained within this  
> communication are given in US dollars.
>
> If you're in the Des Moines, IA, area, check out Debra Heights  
> Wesleyan Church!
>

> And check out my blog, Adventures in Web Development, athttp://jgeerdes.blogspot.com

>   !
>
> On Nov 2, 2009, at 11:04 PM, magicalhobo87 wrote:
>
>
>
> > Hi,
> >  I use this plugin for firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/
> > firefox/addon/9842) which uses the Google Translate API.  But, I get
> > no results for a single character, and it seems to be a problem with
> > Google Translate, e.g.:
>

> > 1.http://www.google.com/uds/samples/language/detect.html