I recently discovered an excellent website that features exotic wheat and dairy-free recipes. Because we are a family with food allergies, we are always seeking new ways to make allergen-free food taste better. La Bella Au Blé Dormant is a fantastic new allergen-friendly website written in French. Although I’m not fluent enough in French to properly read the site, I am able to translate the site into English with Google’s help.
Google Translate is an amazing free online tool that can translate over 50 languages. I’ve used it to translate Twitter tweets and direct messages, comments on Flickr and Panoramio, and even comments on my blog posts. I’ve used it to reply in a reader’s native language, too. To use it, simply navigate to translate.google.com in your browser and copy and paste the text or the URL of the document or website you would like to translate. Google Translate will automatically detect the language of the text you’ve provided as well as your native language, so all you have to do is click on the Translate button.
Google Translate is actually built into the free Google Chrome browser. The Google Chrome browser can detect when the website you are viewing is not written in your native language and provides an unobtrusive toolbar at the top of the page with the option to translate the page into your native language. Here is a screen capture of my favorite French website translated to English using the Google Chrome browser. The translation is far from perfect, but definitely effective enough for translating recipes.
Actually, the translation part of this site was easy. Some of the recipes call for ingredients that just aren’t common in the U.S. That’s the hard part!
If you’d like to try Google translate for yourself, check out my favorite French website , La Bella Au Blé Dormant
Screen capture of Chrome Browser translating page from French to English
Although it won’t translate a website, Google Translate’s iPhone app easily translates spoken or typed text into over 50 other languages. Taking advantage of the built-in microphones of Apple’s latest mobile devices, the Google Translate app makes translating spoken words, phrases, and sentences easier than ever.
spottybanana.wordpress.com 