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vBET
23-10-11, 00:15
Hello :)

We just want to assure you that we are looking new possibilities for translations. At this moment we are working to support Apertium (http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Apertium_web_service) translation API. After reading Terms Of Service we found no limitation against supporting it in vBET (still we send email with question, just to be sure).

The API is free now (we do not know will it be switched to paid one) it supports lot of language pairs and it is still in beta stage. At this moment we have no idea what limits they have (we know that some limits are set). Also quality of translation is not known yet. We just start experimenting with it, also we are still waiting for response from Apertium team, so we cannot tell to much yet. Still we want you to know that we would like to support in vBET as many APIs as possible to give you more choice and more translations in case of limits set in one API.

Any important news about Apertium integration will be published here.

vBET
23-10-11, 02:02
Some info after first tests.

We already have it working in vBET (vBET is easy to add new translation APIs).
Apertium Translation API performance at this moment is poor. Short request are answered in around 300 milliseconds what is OK. Still long requests are answered even in 13 seconds (different response time - in our few tests between 5-13 seconds). Of course we can do nothing in this area - this is for vBET waiting time - waiting for response. We cannot tell does performance will be improved here - this is 3rd party service. This is not critical issue because after caching vBET gets translations immediately, still for some forums this it can be not acceptable for page to load 20 seconds - even if it is only for first translation. From the other hand - who wants have fast translation have options in paid APIs, so in lack of other free APIs (Microsoft will be still free only for limit 2 millions characters/month - but it will be still free).

We will test it well on test and real forum. At this moment we made only few tests (already in vBET code) on small test forum.

Also we already see that we will have to add new configuration capabilities in vBET - like possibility to set providers priorities globally. Now it can be done by editing lot of configuration files and we see that it is not the way. We didn't predict that so big changes will be made in translation market, but we will adopt :)

vBET
23-10-11, 23:40
We already started testing Apertium Translation API on our real forum. We set logs, so after some time we will be able to tell more about real performance.

At this moment vBET supports 30 language pairs from Apertium (there is more but not common for other translation engines). We already see that adding Apertium to vBET is good idea even if performance is not the best (after all we have cache so net time it is immediate). We see it in logs - where other limits was reached now we are still able to do translations thanks to Apertium. At this moment from logs we see that mostly those are translations from English (most content here is in English) to: es, ca, gl Of course it is supported more.

To see full list of supported language pairs please see here: http://api.apertium.org/json/listPairs
Those are language pairs which now will NOT be supported (at least now):


oc => es
es => ca_valencia
oc_aran => ca
an => es
fr => eo
nb => nn_a
ca => en_US
ca => oc_aran
nn => nb
ca => oc
oc_aran => es
es => eo
oc => ca
br => fr
en => eo
ca => eo
es => oc_aran
nn => nn_a
es => pt_BR
es => oc
es => an
eo => en
nn_a => nn
es => en_US
nb => nn

We will not support it now, because there is no all-to-all support and other engines do not have such languages. We will still check does some codes cannot be just mapped in case if same language with other codes is used in other translation APIs. Anyway in first release supporting Apertium we will not support all pairs.

We want (and are ready to do it now) to use Apertium for those language pairs:


bg => mk
ca => en
ca => es
ca => fr
ca => pt
cy => en
da => sv
en => ca
en => es
en => gl
es => ca
es => en
es => gl
es => pt
es => ro
eu => es
fr => cs
fr => es
gl => en
gl => es
gl => pt
is => en
it => ca
mk => bg
mk => en
pt => ca
pt => es
pt => gl
ro => es
sv => da

Should be 30 of those. If we miss something please let us know. Also if you will get information about new language pairs supported, then also please let us know.

Simon Lloyd
26-10-11, 20:33
Great work Michael :), the more API keys we can enter for different API's the better, even if they are paid ones, you could introduce check boxes for users to be able to turn on/off those paid api's that they wish to use - nice to see this developing anyway!

vBET
03-11-11, 13:57
Yes we already considered to give option to turn on/off some API without changes in configuration files. At this moment I think that it will be simply recognized by API key. If API key is not used for some Translation API then the API is not used. It is not implemented yet - only idea now.

vBET
13-11-11, 18:27
Because we will add Apertium support in next release there will be small license change - Apertium will be also listed as translation provider.

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