Der Mundo

We are also preparing to update the www.worldwidelexicon.org site. It currently is forwarded to Der Mundo, but will soon point to our Word Press server and new blog. If you are using the Worldwide Lexicon web API, this address may change. We recommend you use the following addresses for API calls:

• worldwidelexicon.appspot.com : for the current version of the API
• wwlapi.appspot.com : for the version 2 API (which is currently under development)

When we release the open source server code and version 2 API, it will most likely live at api.worldwidelexicon.org from then on.

If you have any questions, email me at bsmcconnell on gmail. Thanks. Brian

We are currently working on an update to our web API, and will also be releasing the source code for our translation memory in June.

The new API includes a number of improvements and new features. Among them:

• Faster performance. All queries are memcached to minimize latency.
• Integrated human/machine translation queries. Call the /q service with a text that you need translations for, and if no human translations have been recorded, we’ll proxy through to a machine translation engine to try to obtain a computer generated translation.
• Support for workgroups and expanded access control rules. Site owners can create a workgroup and define access rights for users.
• Rules engine. Site owners can create rules to govern how translations are processed (e.g. anonymous translations must be reviewed by a editor first).
• Well organized and documented Python source code, so people who want to build their own translation memory or adapt WWL may easily do so.

We will also be releasing the source code for the translation memory server next month. It is written in Python and runs on Google’s App Engine grid computing platform. App Engine is an on demand computing environment, similar to Amazon Web Services.

The Guardian of London ran this article about the Worldwide Lexicon and Der Mundo in their Technology section today. This is the first major publication to cover us, so it will be interesting to see who joins WWL next. Thanks! Brian

This is a test. We are upgrading the system so it can translate new articles more quickly.

We are upgrading our system this week to support faster automatic translations for new posts. As we improve our systems, you will notice that new articles will be translated to about 10 languages, usually within half an hour. These computer translations are temporary and will be replaced as soon as a person submits a translation or edits one of the computer translations.

We have added a new translation viewer and editor to Der Mundo. This new tool displays translations in a popup window that floats over the original webpage, which is displayed in the background. If you are a webmaster, this means that people are visiting your site when they are reading or creating a translation. If you are a translator, this means you can see the original page, in its original format, when you are editing or creating a translation. We also will be releasing a button, or badge, for webmasters to embed in their pages.