We’ve had some really awesome plugins come in from third-party developers working in our API Lab. These plugins make it convenient to order professional-quality translations from within the platform or content management system of your choice, allowing anyone to grow their audience and reach.
The next plugin we are covering is G-Gengo by Josh Chia, which allows you to order human translations from within Google’s Gmail. Gmail is one of the most popular Web mail services in the world and, by a recent count, boasts over 260 million users worldwide.
Installing the Plugin
Before you can experience the magic of myGengo-powered translations within Gmail, you'll need to install the plugin. This is really easy to do. Here's how:
- While logged into Gmail, click the cog in the upper right corner. From the drop-down menu, select Settings.
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Click on Labs, enable the “Add any gadget by URL” Lab, then save changes.
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From the Gadgets tab, type the following into the “Add any gadget by URL” field:
http://www.gaegengo.appspot.com/gadget/gadgetgengo.xml.
G-Gengo will appear in the left column of your Gmail interface.
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G-Gengo will prompt you for your myGengo API keys, which you can get here. Click save, and you’ll be done!
Using the Plugin
Once installed, G-Gengo gives you access to human translations in four simple steps:
- From the G-Gengo interface, select “Order Translation,” specify a job title, then type or paste the text to be translated into the next field. You may also leave a comment for the translator.
- Select your source and target languages, and the quality level.
- Click "Purchase" to submit your order.
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Receive a completed translation within 24 hours.
Let’s see it in action:
Suppose I recently met with a potential Moroccan business partner, Mr. Shehata, and now I would like to follow up with a thank you note. To help make myself stand out in his mind, I want the note to be in his native tongue of Arabic. For this reason, a mere machine translation will not do — the last thing I want is to send him a note that sounds stiff and artificial.
Fortunately, I have installed G-Gengo following the instructions above, allowing me to order a myGengo-powered translation from inside Gmail.
1. Ordering a Translation
I go ahead and type a draft of the message into G-Gengo. Mr. Shehata is a potential business client, so I use the comment field to let the translator know that I want her to “keep the tone formal.”
2. Specifying Languages and Quality Level
I then scroll down and specify English and Arabic as the source and target languages for this job, respectively. Although Mr. Shehata is a professional contact, the message I am sending him is a simple thank you note free of any complicated language or subject matter. For such a message, I think standard level quality should suffice, so I go with that.
3. Submitting the Order
With the language pair and quality level have been specified for my job, I can confirm the order. This will transmit the job to myGengo’s queue for a translator to pick up, translate, and return to me within 24 hours — again, all within Gmail.
4. Receive a myGengo-powered translation!
Once I receive my translation, G-Gengo’s Action menu will offer new options. Revising the job will allow me to send the translation back with additional comments or instructions. Rejection is pretty self-explanatory, and will submit the translation to myGengo’s review process. Otherwise, I can approve the translation, fire it off in a new message and impress Mr. Shehata!
In a few simple steps, G-Gengo has allowed me to access professional-quality translations from within Gmail. The example above was a short thank you note, but G-Gengo is a full-featured plugin which means you can use it to order translations for text of varying purposes and complexity. For example:
- G-Gengo can help penpals from different countries communicate with each other.
- It can facilitate making travel reservations (or any kind of reservations, really).
- G-Gengo can also streamline internal communications between different divisions in multinational companies.
This concludes the third part of our API Lab winner profiles. If you have any questions or comments about G-Gengo, you can reach Josh via his repository. Several other plugins are also available for many popular platforms and content management systems like Chrome and Wordpress. If you are a developer interested in working on a plugin, you can visit our API Lab to find out more.
