5 ms·

LangId Tells You The Language of Your Text

13 points by fogus 17y ago

amr 17y ago
wtf? Identifies Arabic correctly but displays the Saudi flag. I like the service, though, despite of this minor annoyance.
- mahmud 17y ago
  I saw that too :-/ They're confusing the saudi flag with the arab league flag, both green with white arabic text. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Flag_of_the_Arab_League.svg/800px-Flag_of_the_Arab_League.svg.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Fla...
- andreaolivato 17y ago
  Hi guys, I'm Langid founder. Sorry for getting the wrong flag, I changed the saudi with the one you provided. http://langid.net/images/flags/48/ar.png http://langid.net/images/flags/48/ar.png Thanks for feedback and have a great day!
jonsen 17y ago
Close but not really close: identifies faroese as icelandic.
yannis 17y ago
NLP is a hard nut to crack! Even with the Google API :) From impressive ... identifying Greek written in English, correctly to returning French and Czech (flag missing!) for gibberish! Nice Toy!
RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
An unfair test, but it "identified" lojban as Italian.
hristov 17y ago
I tried this obscure eastern European language. It identifies polite phrases correctly, but curse words get identified as Portuguese for some reason. They need to bone up on their international cursing.
- imp 17y ago
  I tried just the word "reddit" and it identified it as Portuguese as well. Maybe that's a default for unknown words.
jhancock 17y ago
I went with "ni hao". It told me it was Vietnamese. Possibly, but not only.
donw 17y ago
Identified several common Japanese phrases as Vietnamese. True, the difference is subtle, but...
fizx 17y ago
Semi-open source code and tutorial that you can use to understand what they're doing. http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/demos/tutorial/langid/read-me.html http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/demos/tutorial/langid/read-me.ht...
commiebob 17y ago
Would be even nicer if it provided a link to translate or just showed a translation as well.
defied 17y ago
Nice implementation of the Google Ajax Language API: http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/documentation/#Detect http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/documentation/#Dete...
- rwolf 17y ago
  It's funny--I was going to post that exact phrase and link.
uninverted 17y ago
Did anyone else expect this to be for programming languages?
riahi 17y ago
It also picked up Persian while transliterated. That's impressive to me, because Persian does not have a standard method of transliteration.
- quant18 17y ago
  Transliterated Russian seems to get ID'd correctly, but only sometimes. (Anything with "zdrastvuite" in it, for example, works fine. But other simple Russian 101 sentences --- e.g. "U menya est odin karandash" meaning "I have a pencil" --- get ID'd as French. Unless of course I'm spelling it wrong.). But I haven't seen it correctly ID transliterated Chinese or Korean yet.
inglesp 17y ago
Hm. It identified Bislama - pidgin English from Vanuatu - as Indonesian.
- mahmud 17y ago
  Yes, "bislama" means "with peace" in various languages in the muslim parts of the world (to me it sounds very north african.)
jerf 17y ago
To help with all the many postings expressing surprise at a misidentification: How long was your sample? According to the link posted by fixz, http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/demos/tutorial/langid/read-me.html http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/demos/tutorial/langid/read-me.ht... , this is using letter-frequency statistics. It's very easy to fool such a system by feeding it a very short sample. For a similar problem that can arise with trying to auto-detect encodings, see: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/03/24/95235.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/03/24/95235.a... Try feeding it a bit more than a single word or sentence.
- andreaolivato 17y ago
  Yeah you got that right. The more you type the more google apis should be accurate.
jpcx01 17y ago
I love this tool. Been bookmarked. There's something seriously wrong with the web (or my usage of it). Whenever I need something like this, I cant find it. Go on google, search for any kind of tool. No matter how you word it, the results never get passed 1999. Yesterday I needed something to convert a couple timezones. Try finding something via google. Every relevant keyword match was a pile of shit tool belongs in 1995. One idea is that the people who are good at making tools are the exact opposite of the people who are good at SEO. Or I could just be doing something wrong. Not using google right, or maybe I should be using a different search engine. Help would be appreciated!
andreaolivato 17y ago
Added 'Identify by Link' feature!

13 points by fogus 17y ago

amr 17y ago

wtf? Identifies Arabic correctly but displays the Saudi flag. I like the service, though, despite of this minor annoyance.

mahmud 17y ago
I saw that too :-/ They're confusing the saudi flag with the arab league flag, both green with white arabic text. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Flag_of_the_Arab_League.svg/800px-Flag_of_the_Arab_League.svg.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Fla...
andreaolivato 17y ago
Hi guys, I'm Langid founder. Sorry for getting the wrong flag, I changed the saudi with the one you provided. http://langid.net/images/flags/48/ar.png http://langid.net/images/flags/48/ar.png Thanks for feedback and have a great day!

jonsen 17y ago

Close but not really close: identifies faroese as icelandic.

yannis 17y ago

NLP is a hard nut to crack! Even with the Google API :) From impressive ... identifying Greek written in English, correctly to returning French and Czech (flag missing!) for gibberish! Nice Toy!

RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago

An unfair test, but it "identified" lojban as Italian.

hristov 17y ago

I tried this obscure eastern European language. It identifies polite phrases correctly, but curse words get identified as Portuguese for some reason. They need to bone up on their international cursing.

imp 17y ago
I tried just the word "reddit" and it identified it as Portuguese as well. Maybe that's a default for unknown words.

jhancock 17y ago

I went with "ni hao". It told me it was Vietnamese. Possibly, but not only.

donw 17y ago

Identified several common Japanese phrases as Vietnamese. True, the difference is subtle, but...

fizx 17y ago

Semi-open source code and tutorial that you can use to understand what they're doing. http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/demos/tutorial/langid/read-me.html http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/demos/tutorial/langid/read-me.ht...

commiebob 17y ago

Would be even nicer if it provided a link to translate or just showed a translation as well.

defied 17y ago

Nice implementation of the Google Ajax Language API: http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/documentation/#Detect http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/documentation/#Dete...

rwolf 17y ago
It's funny--I was going to post that exact phrase and link.

uninverted 17y ago

Did anyone else expect this to be for programming languages?

riahi 17y ago

It also picked up Persian while transliterated. That's impressive to me, because Persian does not have a standard method of transliteration.

quant18 17y ago
Transliterated Russian seems to get ID'd correctly, but only sometimes. (Anything with "zdrastvuite" in it, for example, works fine. But other simple Russian 101 sentences --- e.g. "U menya est odin karandash" meaning "I have a pencil" --- get ID'd as French. Unless of course I'm spelling it wrong.). But I haven't seen it correctly ID transliterated Chinese or Korean yet.

inglesp 17y ago

Hm. It identified Bislama - pidgin English from Vanuatu - as Indonesian.

mahmud 17y ago
Yes, "bislama" means "with peace" in various languages in the muslim parts of the world (to me it sounds very north african.)

jerf 17y ago

To help with all the many postings expressing surprise at a misidentification: How long was your sample? According to the link posted by fixz, http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/demos/tutorial/langid/read-me.html http://alias-i.com/lingpipe/demos/tutorial/langid/read-me.ht... , this is using letter-frequency statistics. It's very easy to fool such a system by feeding it a very short sample. For a similar problem that can arise with trying to auto-detect encodings, see: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/03/24/95235.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/03/24/95235.a... Try feeding it a bit more than a single word or sentence.

andreaolivato 17y ago
Yeah you got that right. The more you type the more google apis should be accurate.

jpcx01 17y ago

I love this tool. Been bookmarked. There's something seriously wrong with the web (or my usage of it). Whenever I need something like this, I cant find it. Go on google, search for any kind of tool. No matter how you word it, the results never get passed 1999. Yesterday I needed something to convert a couple timezones. Try finding something via google. Every relevant keyword match was a pile of shit tool belongs in 1995. One idea is that the people who are good at making tools are the exact opposite of the people who are good at SEO. Or I could just be doing something wrong. Not using google right, or maybe I should be using a different search engine. Help would be appreciated!

andreaolivato 17y ago

Added 'Identify by Link' feature!