Google-Tipps
Google ist ein extrem wichtiges Werkzeug – doch die vielen Möglichkeiten dieser Suchmaschine werden von Übersetzern oft nicht richtig genutzt (oder gar gekannt). Unser Joe Bryan hat seine Top Ten für uns aufgeschrieben:
Top tips to use Google effectively
1. Find an exact phrase (“…”)
Put your query in quotation marks and Google will only return hits that match the phrase exactly. Useful for researching how often the term is used.
2. Include a specific word (+)
Google automatically ignores some words (the, a, I, etc) – put a plus sign in front of them to include them in the search. And if you only want British English? Put the + sign in front of a British spelling, such as “favourite”, to exclude results with the American version.
3. Exclude a specific word (-)
The minus sign excludes a certain word from your search.
4. Find a synonym (~)
By preceding your search term with the tilde symbol (~), you can search not only for that word but also any synonyms of it.
5. Throw in a wildcard (*)
Add an asterisk to the beginning/middle/end of an incomplete phrase and Google will display results that start/contain/finish with that phrase, such as „Google * my life“. Try using this clever function to find common collocations.
6. Search within results
Whatever you Google, you are likely to be faced with thousands or millions of hits. You can narrow this down using the ‘Search within results’ function, found at the bottom of the results page.
7. Search a specific site
You might want to search for a particular term only on one website, for example to see how a certain company uses that word. Simply type the term and then “site:” followed by the relevant URL. Substituting the URL for a top-level domain (.org, .de, .com, .edu, etc) extends the search to websites containing this TLD.
8. Google Images
Google Images is a valuable but underused tool. If you are searching for the English equivalent of a German term, it can be helpful to compare results of image searches in the two languages.
9. Google definition
You can use Google to explain a term by adding ‘define’, ‘what is’ or ‘ what are’ before your search term. This could be a useful starting point for further research.
10. Advanced search
Advanced search offers additional possibilities to refine your query. You can, for example, limit results to German websites. You can also restrict the search to particular document types, e.g. PDFs. Maybe you’re looking for the latest take on a subject – then simply select how recent the hits should be (past 24 hours, month, year).
Source: http://www.googleguide.com/
