Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Microsoft has announced that their translation services are changing. The date is April 30, 2017. They will be changing to a new set of API’s they named Azure.
I have no idea how many, if any, SL Translators depend on the Microsoft API’s. But, those that do will need to change.
If you use a translator in Second Life, you know recent changes at Google have caused several models of translators to fail. You also know that since 2012 the viewer’s built-in translator cannot be connected to the Bing or Google translation services as originally planned by the Lab. Viewer translation is essentially broken. We have to use an add-on.
Following this blog you’ve seen the recent previous articles. (See: Second Life: Metanomics Translator Failing.)
I have seen a couple of posts in the SL Forum about the Metanomics translator giving a script error and not translating. I decided to try mine.
I don’t get an error with my copy of the Metanomics translator. I get a bunch of garbage in the chat window. It is definitely having a problem with the Second Life 3.7.27 (300424) viewer.
This translation thing is present for me now. I decided to try and get the Bing Free Translation API working in my viewer. That would save me using Discord’s Metanomics, that he really doesn’t seem to want out there.
The result of my effort is: BUG-8794 – The Bing API used by the viewer is depreciated.
The Lab was making the change over to a viewer based translator in late 2011. That was in response to Bing, Google, Yahoo, and other players in the translate game deciding they would charge for their translation service.
Word gets around. Ravelli Ormstein learned of the article Second Life Free Language Translator I wrote and responded. You can see the comment here, scroll down. He gave me a link to a buried comment made by the author of the translator. That comment is enlightening. Read it below the fold.
IMPORTANT – READ:Second Life: Update on Metanomics Translator
A couple of years back Google decided to charge for its translator service. Many of the translators in use in Second Life were dependent on Google’s service. Those translators failed.
Do you remember the Bablefish translator? That was my translator until Google changed the API.
Soon other translation services followed Google’s lead. One must now have an account of some kind to use those services in a Second Life app… or any app.