SUPPORT FOR INTERNATIONAL SEARCH TERMS - TRANSLATE AS YOU SEARCH

• US 20090287471A1
• Filed: 05/08/2009
• Published: 11/19/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/16/2008
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: PayPal, Inc. (PayPal Holdings, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: PayPal, Inc. (PayPal Holdings, Inc.)
• Inventors: Bennett, James D.
• Application Number:
  US12/437,607
• Publication Number:
  US 20090287471A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9577 Optimising the visualization of content, e.g. distillation of HTML documents
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/263 Language identification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/58 Use of machine translation, e.g. for multi-lingual retrieval, for server-side translation for client devices or for real-time translation

Abstract

A web browser agent or plug-in installed into a web browser of a client device provides translation services along with a search engine server. The system accesses a web page in one (local) language and then translates to another (foreign) language and displays the translated content in a web page for user'"'"'s viewing. The web browser agent is an add-on software tool or plug-in, provided by the search engine server and installed into the web browser. As a result of installation, a toolbar appears on the top of the web browser'"'"'s page. This toolbar provides the interface to enable local translation of web pages from a local/web language to a target/foreign language useful to the user. Centralized (cloud computing) translation services by servers of a third party may also be employed. Web pages in any number of languages may be accessed using this operations/structure.

Claims

1. A client device containing a web browser that supports accessing of web pages from a server over the Internet, the client device comprising:

a processing circuit;

memory coupled to the processing circuit;

network interface circuitry coupled to the processing circuit, wherein the processing circuit, memory, and network operationally interface to provide the following features;

a web browser agent, associated with the web browser, that supports language translation of a downloaded web page from the server, the translation being from a first language to a second language, wherein the web browser agent comprises;

(i) a client side language identification module that supports identification of the first language of the downloaded web page; and

(ii) a client side translator module that supports translation of the downloaded web page from the first language to the second language;

wherein the web browser displays the downloaded web page, in the first language on screen of the client device;

wherein the client side language identification module identifies the first language, by extracting content from the downloaded web page and processing it using a language recognition process;

wherein the client side translator module translates the downloaded web page from the first language to the second language, to construct a translated web page; and

wherein the web browser displays the translated web page, in the second language, on a display screen of the client device for interface by a user.

2. The client device of claim 1, wherein the web browser agent further comprises a conjugate terms database that is used for the language recognition process.

3. The client device of claim 2, wherein the conjugate terms database comprises original language segments in a plurality of predetermined languages succeeded by a language segments expressing precise or approximate meanings of the original language segments in a plurality of other predetermined languages, along with respective language tags.

4. The client device of claim 2, wherein pattern recognition is used as the language recognition process to identify the first language.

5. The client device of claim 1, wherein the web browser agent further comprises a character set identification module.

6. The client device of claim 5, wherein the character set identification module comprises alphabets in various languages succeeded by a language tag, wherein the character set identification module may be used to identify the first language.

7. The client device of claim 5, wherein the character set identification module assists the client side language identification module in identifying a first language of the downloaded web page.

8. The client device of claim 1, wherein the web browser agent further comprises a translation rule module.

9. The client device of claim 8, wherein the translation rule module comprises rules that are necessary to translate content from the first language to the second language, by using the client side translator module.

10. The client device of claim 1, wherein the translation from the first language to the second language is initiated by a user selection in a toolbar associated with the web browser.

11. The client device of claim 1, wherein the first language and the second language are subsets of a few predetermined set of languages, wherein the client device can provide a multi language translation process whereby several web content languages can each be translated to many different target languages.

12. A search engine server adapted to be communicatively coupled via a network that supports delivery of web links to a web browser, the search engine server comprising:

a processing circuit;

memory coupled to the processing circuit;

network interface circuitry coupled to the processing circuit, wherein the processing circuit, memory, and network operationally interface to provide the following features;

a plurality of server side multi-language translator modules that support translation of web page content of a web page from a first language to a second language;

a server side language identification module that supports identifying the first language of the web page;

wherein the search engine server accesses a web page in the first language from over the Internet using a search string provided by a user in a search language, and displays the web page on screen of the client device;

wherein the server side language identification module identifies the first language, by extracting content from the web page and processing the content;

wherein the server side multi language translator modules enables effective searching by translating the search string provided in the search language to the first language so that local web content can be searched in the first language;

wherein the server side multi language translator modules translates contents of the web page from the first language to the second language for legible presentation to a user that comprehends the second language; and

wherein the search engine server delivers the translated web page in the third language through the network interface circuitry to the web browser for display on a physical display screen.

13. The search engine server of claim 12, wherein the search engine server further comprises a server side language identification module that can recognize the first language, the search language, and the second language.

14. The search engine server of claim 13, wherein the server side language identification module identifies first language of the web page, upon delivery of a web link of the web page by the client side server translation support module, in the absence of tag that identifies the first language for the search engine server.

15. The search engine server of claim 12, wherein the web browser agent further comprises a character set identification module that can identify the first language via character recognition.

16. The search engine server of claim 15, wherein the character set identification module assists the client side language identification module in identifying the first language of the web page.

17. The search engine server of claim 12, wherein the first language is identified by the search engine server via pattern recognition of textual content within the web page.

18. The search engine server of claim 12, wherein the translation from the first language to the second language is initiated by an appropriate selection made by a user in a toolbar of a user interface of the web browser.

19. A method performed by a web browser agent incorporated into web browser in a client device, the method comprising the steps of:

waiting for user input via an interface within a web browser agent that appears on the screen of the client device;

finding search result web pages by translating and using the user input;

identifying a first language of a search result web page that is found in response to the user input via the interface;

translating the web page from the first language to a second language selected by the user; and

displaying the translated web page in the second language on the screen of the client device using web browser tools.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the step of identifying the language of the web page comprises determining the language of the web page by searching through a conjugate terms database, that contains words and strings in various languages associated with a plurality of words and strings expressing precise or approximate meanings in other languages.

21. The method of claim 19, wherein the step of identifying the language of the web page comprises identifying characters in the web page using character sets in various languages along with language tags.

22. The method of claim 19, wherein the step of identifying the language of the web page comprises extracting content from the web page and using pattern recognition on the content to identify the first language.