Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has done it again with Bing Translator, bringing back the automated translation service to its TweetDeck.
Back in June 2013, Twitter Inc had quietly introduced Bing Translator to auto translate tweets in non-native languages of user. As with most efficient features offered by Twitter, there was no announcement of the introduction of the feature and users became aware of it during the selective testing phase. To many, the auto translate feature, was a welcome surprise.
First offered as Windows Phone app, the feature was included for iOS and Android OS by June of 2014, in time for the FIFA World Cup.
Inexact but ‘Gist’ful Translation
Though, the translation was not exact, it did not fail to provide a gist of the tweet, allowing power users such as journalists to receive first-hand breaking news stories from around the world.
However, Twitter appeared to further experiment with the Microsoft Corporatoin (NASDAQ:MSFT)-powered Bing Translator, pulling the service off the Twitter platform by August of 2014, without any further notice.
At the time of the withdrawal of the feature, most admitted the limitations of the auto-translate feature, it was welcomed by many for its sheer ‘usefulness’ in providing rough gist’s of the tweet.
Experts believe the trouble is with the auto-translating slang and abbreviations that are commonly used due to the compactness desired in Tweets. Auto-translate feature is nearly accurate, when used for posts, articles or press releases; as it adopts more contextual- based translation. Tweets which are crowded with abbreviations and texts are therefore difficult to accurately translate, even by powerful auto-translating platforms such as Bing Translator.
However, on Wednesday, Twitter appears to have reintroduced it on TweetDeck, as users posted its reappearance.
The feature is available only when users click on the link/icon for translation of the tweet. Though Twitter has officially confirmed the introduction of the feature, there were no comments about it. Therefore, various interpretations abound on the reintroduction of the auto-translator. Perhaps, Twitter is toying with further permanent deployment of the feature on the platform?
