Introduction to Yandex Translate Online Translation System

1. Tool Introduction

Yandex Translate is an online machine translation system that supports translation between multiple languages. Compared to traditional CAT tools, online translation software is more convenient to use and operate; it does not require downloading specific translation software onto your computer. You only need to enter the website in your browser, and saving it as a bookmark saves time on future searches, making it very convenient. Additionally, it is a free online translation system, making it a great choice for students. The page that opens after entering the URL, as shown in Figure 1, can translate four types of content. Next, I will introduce these four types separately.

Official Website: https://translate.yandex.com/

Figure 1

2. Illustrated Tutorial

1) Text Translation

After entering the URL, select the red icon (Figure 2) to perform document translation. Choose the source language text you want to translate, then paste or input the needed text. There are several icons in the source text area (Figure 2), where the speaker icon can read the translated text aloud, and the microphone icon can input the translated text through reading (this feature is unavailable without registration). In the translation area, there are also some icons (Figure 2); the first icon that looks like a book is for favorites, allowing you to save some bilingual words or sentences for easy access later, creating your own terminology database.

Figure 2

A unique feature of Yandex Translate’s text translation is that it can directly link to Google and Bing translations, providing the same text’s translation results, allowing users to compare translations to achieve the best results. Below is the translation result from Bing (Figure 3).

Figure 3

The icons pointed out by the arrows (Figure 4) are collections of certain categories provided by the system, including food-related words, commonly used words, and more. All words in the collections are translations between English and Russian.

Figure 4

Figure 5 shows a randomly selected word from one of the collections, with the source language being English and the translation being Russian. By comparing Figures 5 and 6, it can be seen that the language translations limited to the collection provide the source language dictionary, showing the pronunciation and synonyms of the word, along with three tense variations of the source language. Additionally, examples in the source language will be provided, and corresponding examples in Russian will follow. However, if the source or target language of the word in the collection is changed, there will be no dictionary or examples, only the translation result (Figure 6). Here, users can also create their own collections, selecting mutual translations between any two languages to establish their own terminology collections for easier future use.

Figure 5

Figure 6

2) URL Translation

Select the red icon (Figure 4) to perform URL translation. The yellow icon in Figure 4 allows you to choose the layout format for the source text and translation, either horizontal or vertical, depending on your preference.

Figure 7

Here we input the URL of CNKI https://www.cnki.net/, with the source language set to Chinese and the target language set to English. The result, as shown in Figure 5, shows that the Chinese text on the page has been translated into English. Similarly, you can choose a source language that is not Chinese and translate it into Chinese.

Figure 8

3) Document Translation

Select the yellow icon (Figure 6) for document translation, then upload the document you need to translate, supporting various formats like pdf, doc, and ppt. Similarly, document translation can choose different layouts.

Figure 9

Figure 7 shows a document with the source language as Chinese and the target language as German. The format of the translation is consistent with the original text, and hovering the mouse over a part of the translation displays the original text (Figure 8), which can help users check if there are any issues with the translation.

Figure 10

Figure 11

4) Image Translation

Select the yellow icon (Figure 9) to translate images. Images can be uploaded or dragged. Figure 10 shows an image with Chinese content, with the target language being English. After uploading the image, you can choose to mark the content as lines or words in yellow, but the translation is not given directly; it requires manual operation, where the translation for a sentence is provided only when the mouse clicks on that sentence (Figure 10). You can also zoom in or out on the image using the buttons in the upper left corner.

Figure 9

Figure 10

3. Learning Insights

Overall, Yandex Translate is a very convenient online translation system with many features, capable of translating various types of content. Among these, URL and image translation are notable features, especially the ability to translate images directly, saving users time in extracting text. Yandex Translate also allows direct navigation to Google and Bing pages for translating the same text, enabling users to compare translations, which is a major highlight of this translation system.

However, compared to other online translation systems, Yandex Translate has certain shortcomings. For instance, it does not provide an online dictionary, only offering a single translation without listing some core vocabulary from the translation. It also lacks the feature of showing meanings when hovering over complex words in the translation, and it does not provide synonyms for certain words in the text.

In summary, every online translation system has its own advantages and disadvantages. There is no absolute good or bad. When choosing a translation system, it is essential to understand its usage methods and features to better utilize its strengths.

4. Accompanying Video

Author: Shi Qinglin

Reviewed by: Li Zhicheng, Zhu Yu, Chen Mengna, Xia Jingyi

Edited by: Li Qiuyue