Automatic technical language extension engine

1. A term-translation-enhanced information-rendering system comprising:

a computer system, including one or more processors, electronic memory, communications-hardware interfaces, a display device, and an operating system;

an information-rendering application program that runs on the computer system to render information descriptions for display to a user on the display device;

a term-translation event handler invoked by the information-rendering application program, during rendering and display of term-translation-enhanced information descriptions, to display a translation for a particular, displayed term upon detection of user input requesting translation of the term; and

a term-translation-settings management module that provides, to a user of the computer system, a user interface through which the user can select values for various term-translation settings that control term translation for information displayed by the information-rendering application program.

2. The term-translation-enhanced information-rendering system of claim 1 wherein the information descriptions comprise electronically stored and transmitted files that specify, to the information-rendering application program, textual, graphical, and/or other information for rendering and display to a user.

3. The term-translation-enhanced information-rendering system of claim 2 wherein the information descriptions include HTML descriptions of web pages for rendering and display.

4. The term-translation-enhanced information-rendering system of claim 1 wherein the information-rendering application program displays a visual indication, to the user, for each displayed term for which a translation can be displayed.

5. The term-translation-enhanced information-rendering system of claim 1 wherein the term-translation event handler is invoked by the information-rendering application program upon notification of an input event corresponding to user input to a displayed term and wherein the term-translation event handler obtains a translation for the displayed term associated with the input event and displays the translation to the user on the display device.

6. The term-translation-enhanced information-rendering system of claim 5 wherein the term-translation event handler obtains a translation for the displayed term associated with the input event by one of:

requesting the translation from a local term-translation database;

requesting the translation from a remote term-translation database;

requesting the translation from a remote web server; and

retrieving the translation from a local term-translation cache.

7. The term-translation-enhanced information-rendering system of claim 1 wherein the term-translation-settings management module provides the user, through the displayed user interface, with the ability to set the value of settings to:

turn on term translation;

turn off term translation; and

specify a target language for term translation, in which translations are provided.

8. The term-translation-enhanced information-rendering system of claim 1 wherein a displayed term translation includes one or more target-language terms and wherein each target-language term is be associated with 0, 1, or more definitions in the target language.

9. The term-translation-enhanced information-rendering system of claim 8 wherein the target language is one of:

a natural language different from a base language of the displayed information;

a technical language; and

a scientific language.

10. A term-translation-enhanced information-description-providing system comprising:

a computer system, including one or more processors, electronic memory, communications-hardware interfaces, a display device, and an operating system;

an information-providing application program that runs on the computer system to receive a request for a term-translation-enhanced information description from an information-rendering application program and transmit to the information-rendering application program a term-translation-enhanced information description in response to the request; and

a term-translation filter invoked by the information-providing application program to electronically mark translatable terms within a partially-term-translation-enabled information description to produce a corresponding term-translation-enabled information description.

11. The term-translation-enhanced information-description-providing system of claim 10 wherein the information descriptions comprise electronically stored and transmitted files that specify, to the information-rendering application program, textual, graphical, and/or other information for rendering and display to a user.

12. The term-translation-enhanced information-description-providing system of claim 11 wherein the information descriptions include HTML descriptions of web pages for rendering and display.

13. The term-translation-enhanced information-description-providing system of claim 10 wherein the information-providing application program receives a request for a term-translation-enhanced information description from an information-rendering application program and transmits to the information-rendering application program a term-translation-enhanced information description in response to the request by:

receiving the request through a communications interface;

locating an electronically-stored partially-term-translation-enabled information description corresponding to the requested term-translation-enhanced information description;

invoking the term-translation filter to electronically mark translatable terms within the partially-term-translation-enabled information description to produce a corresponding term-translation-enabled information description; and

transmitting the term-translation-enhanced information description to the information-rendering application program.

14. The term-translation-enhanced information-description-providing system of claim 13 wherein the partially-term-translation-enabled information description comprises an information description in which one or more particular portions of text specified for display to a user are marked as term-translation regions to enable term translation for certain terms within the term-translation regions.

15. The term-translation-enhanced information-description-providing system of claim 14 wherein the term-translation filter:

identifies the term-translation regions within a partially-term-translation-enabled information description; and

for each term within each identified term-translation region,

determines whether a target-language translation is available for the term, and

when a target-language translation is available for the term, electronically marks the term as a translatable term.

16. The term-translation-enhanced information-description-providing system of claim 15 wherein the term-translation filter determines whether a target-language translation is available for the term by comparing the term to a list of terms for which translations are available to the target language obtained from a translation database.

17. The term-translation-enhanced information-description-providing system of claim 14 wherein the partially-term-translation-enabled information description further comprises scripts or a callback to obtain scripts, execution of which is invoked by the information-rendering application program to implement a term-translation event handler to display a translation for a particular term upon detection of user input requesting translation of the term.

18. The term-translation-enhanced information-description-providing system of claim 17 wherein the term-translation-enhanced information-description-providing system additionally receives requests from the term-translation event handler to provide translations for particular terms and responds to the requests by returning one or more target-language translation obtained from a term-translation database.

19. The term-translation-enhanced information-description-providing system of claim 10 wherein term-translation-enhanced information-description-providing system obtains lists of terms for which target-language translations are available and one or more translations for a particular term by one of:

requesting the list of terms or the target-language translation from a local term-translation database;

requesting the list of terms or the target-language translation from a remote term-translation database;

retrieving the target-language translation from a local term-translation cache.

20. The term-translation-enhanced information-description-providing system of claim 10 wherein a displayed term translation includes one or more target-language terms and wherein each target-language term is be associated with 0, 1, or more definitions in the target language.