Google Translate Does Thai

There’s an end to your blindness in the Land of the Free. Without much fanfare, Google Translate quietly rolled out translation to/from Thai and six other languages. That’s right, you’re now able to read Thai.

Well, basic Thai. Gave it a quick try. You won’t win a Pulitzer Prize with Google Translate. But you’re able to basically understand headlines of Thai newspapers – and may even impress your Thai lover.

Translations sound more like a bargirl’s amazing English staccato. But hey, at least you’re communicating in writing. No more secrets and hidden agendas, Google Translate makes you a bit more Thai.

Below some samples – yes, unfortunately as an inline image. This site is Wordpress-based. And can you believe it, Wordpress doesn’t recognize Thai script. It’s an issue I struggle with since the beginning. Hopefully a future version will address the problem.

So no point in posting Thai script comments. All you’d see is ???????. Anyway, better surprise someone. Why not writing a first Thai letter. Here we go:

Thanks for the nod Adam.




Sphere: Related Content

Related posts on absolutelyBangkok.com:

  1. Thai Literature Made Easy
  2. Tidbits: Read & Write Thai + Thailand Sports
  3. So You Want To Run A Thai Film Festival?
  4. TRT Becomes CRT
  5. Thai Love Talk
  6. Top Thai iPhone Apps
  7. Machiavelli Personality Test: Are We A Better Thai Politician?

February 7, 2009 | Filed Under Being Farang, Culture & Arts, The Thai Mind 

Comments

7 Responses to “Google Translate Does Thai”

  1. Phuket Observer on February 7th, 2009 10.54 am

    Excellent. I intend to start translating country-Western Isaan ballads into English soon. ;)

  2. Torben Brams on February 7th, 2009 6.02 pm

    Thanks for the update – that was a nice surprise again from Google. :-)

    Just wanted to let you know that WordPress indeed does support Thai. You need to configure the database settings for UTF and you are all set.

    See live example in the header on my site.

    Write me offline if you need help with this.

    Cheers
    Torben

  3. Google Translate now include Thai | brams.dk on February 7th, 2009 6.49 pm

    [...] is still a bit rough though. You can see some examples on translation difficulties here at absolutelybangkok.com and even my first test translation using “Good luck”  in Thai (one of the few short [...]

  4. The Ghost on February 7th, 2009 7.04 pm

    Wordpress DOES do Thai script. See the comments here:

    http://www.tfs2m.com/main/2009/02/02/scary-hookers-the-scrub-22-33/#comments

    I’m sure there are other thai sites running WP. If you can’t get it working, probably something else at play.

  5. BangkokDan on February 7th, 2009 9.59 pm

    Excellent, that’s good news. Hope I won’t screw up the site, may contact you Torben.

    My “Encoding for pages and feeds” now is UTF-8.

    So be it, guess I just have to delete the -8 …?

    BangkokDan

  6. smitty on February 11th, 2009 11.48 am

    Was wondering when this would happen since a lot of their services are all in Thai now.

    This is good stuff.

    Seems to be working okay.

    http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&u=www.durianseed.com&sl=auto&tl=th

    Wordpress handles Thai quite well.

  7. TRT Becomes PRT on July 2nd, 2009 11.39 pm

    [...] (BD: For basic translations from Thai into English use Google Translate) [...]

Leave a Reply