For those of you who think it's just a rumor, it's not. The terrible news is out - Google is cancelling their translation API! PRs and blogs, posts and Facebook pages - all appearing all over the web with pleas to Google to reconsider.
This is Google's notice in their code.google.com page for their translator:
Important: The Google Translate API has been officially deprecated as of May 26, 2011. Due to the substantial economic burden caused by extensive abuse, the number of requests you may make per day will be limited and the API will be shut off completely on December 1, 2011. For website translations, we encourage you to use the Google Translate Element
A lot of people relying on their API to promote their websites and products will be harmed by this move as well as many independent affiliate marketers and even known companies such as Babylon Translation!
Companies with alternatives are doing everything they can to promote their service since now is the best time to do so. Searching Google for "Translation API" or "Translator API" will lead you mostly to sites and forums related to Google's latest notice. However, there are a few alternatives popping up in search results. The most popular one seems to be Microsoft's (or Bing's) translation API. There are a few others, of course, but if you're going to replace huge company like Google, why not do it with a huge company like Microsoft, right?
WRONG!
We tried several different random sentences and translated to and from 8 languages. The results in Google Translate were much better than those of Bing, but the results of WhiteSmoke's Translator were also better than Bing!
So - is there an alternative to Google that actually works better that Microsoft?
WhiteSmoke's Translator is definitely better, easily allowing you to translate full texts.
The question is, do they have an API for us folk?
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