How you are helping digitize and translate the worlds books

Everyday dusty old books are being scanned into digital format. However, old books are not always easy to understand, due to its age or language. So a few people got together, to try to solve this problem. They came up with a way that you translate and decipher the worlds books, without knowing you had the job in the first place.

You know how when you fill out a form online, and at the end of it, it asks you to verify if you are a human, for your own protection. There are usually two manipulated words that are in a box, and you need to decipher them by typing. Most people find it extremely annoying, I know I do. See the words that appear in the verification box, are words that the computer could not understand. So by you verifying what you are reading you are helping the computer know what the word is.

Have you ever wanted to learn a language? Well the creators of Recaptcha, the word verification application, has solved another problem. How do we translate the web? They came up with an idea, once again they need us to do the work. So what do we get in return well we get to learn a new language for free.

Duolingo launched last year, letting its users learn English, Spanish or German but since then have add French and more languages are to come. Anyone can sign up to learn a new language and it is all free, and all the time you are helping to translate the web.