• -translate Einkommensteuer- - Einkommensteuer is a German word meaning income tax. As the target language was omitted, Google translates to English. Instead of the short translation Google finds a longer phrase in its dictionary and presents the English text their joint assessment for income tax.
• -translate glasses into German- - glasses are an ambiguous term; Google finds two translations but doesnt use the shortest words in their translation (e.g. they show Lesebrille " reading glasses " instead of just Brille).
• -translate friend into Chinese- - Instead of just showing , Google prints the text ...;, ()" as translation. Similarly, entering -translate hello into Chinese- results in much more than just the appropriate word.

Here are two sample queries which specifically do not trigger the onebox:

• -translate Pferd into Italian- - here Im using the German word Pferd " horse " to see if I can do an instant translation into Italian, but this isnt possible; no onebox shows up for this query. The query -translate Pferd from German into Italian- does not work either.
• -translate Hallo into English- - this query does not work either due to the use of quotes (Google only shows a spelling correction suggestion, asking Did you mean: translate Hello into English).

All in all such a translation onebox if done right would be an incredibly helpful feature. Im currently using a Firefox search box connected to Leo.org for English to German translations, and Im referring to it quite frequently. However, the quality of the translation onebox by Google is surprisingly bad... it just doesnt always find the most appropriate words to look up in the dictionary. Even if wed assume the translator would be right 70% of the time, it would still be almost useless because if you dont speak the language you also cant easily verify whether or not youve hit on one of those 30% bad results.

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