Google Language Tools recently added Dutch to its menu option. This makes online translation from Dutch into many other languages a reality. The translation is produced by state-of-the-art technology. Nonetheless today's most sophisticated software doesn't approach the fluency of a native speaker or possess the skill of a professional translator. Automatic translation is very difficult, as the meaning of words depends on the context in which they're used. While at Google they are working on improving the system, it may be some time before anyone can offer human quality automated translations. At present we are of the opinion that the service is quite useful to get at least an initial understanding of the content of a document or web site.
With Google Translate you can conduct searches of sites written in languages other than the one you prefer and get results served in your language. You can also translate text you paste in a given box (see below) or entire websites you are browsing. As an example if you would like to navigate the web site of UPC in English (the only version available on line is in Dutch) simply follow this link and type http://www.upc.nl/ in the essay box as shown in the screenshot below. The tools will automatically translate the site in your language and keep on doing it while you are navigating the site (except if you enter password protected areas).
If you wish to translate a printed document you have to scan it using e.g. Microsoft Office Document Imaging. The software is usually available as part of Microsoft Office Tools (Click "Start" > "All Programs" > "Microsoft Office" > "Microsoft Office Tools" > and finally "Microsoft Office Document Imaging". While scanning the document the OCR function will recognize the characters and convert them into editable text which you can export to MS Word. Thereafter you can translate it using the MS Word translation function or online using Google Translate or other online translation services.
At present using Google Language Tools you can translate Dutch documents in the following languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.
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