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Show HN: Get a great domain by translating your keyword into 30+ languages

20 points by armenarmen ↗ HN
In the dark old days when I was uninspired and couldn't come up with a name for a project I'd hop onto my old pal Google Translate and see if a keyword associated with my name "sounded cool in German"

If it did, and the domain was unused I'd scoop it up and use it.

This process took a while, I'd try German, French, Russian, Armenian, Latvian, etc trying to find something cool that wasn't already being used. So I built http://www.catelus.com/

It translates your keyword into more than 30 different languages and checks if your-word-in-german.com and your-word-in-polish.com are registered/being used. I wanted a name that brought to mind hound dogs, which lead me to "puppy" which in turn lead me to catelus which is Romanian for puppy.

It's a pretty cool word yeah? I was honestly surprised that some analytics company hadn't gobbled that one up. I'd appreciate any feedback you have!

10 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 33.1 ms ] thread
dmitrygr
The "available" column is wrong.

Try entering "cat"

It suggests "kat.com" as available

it is not

armenarmen
Thanks, I'm working on getting rid of the false positives now. They pop up sometimes when a domain is being squated.

My temporary bs solution is adding "Or, just not being used." In the success message. Hacky^2 I know

yabatopia
It sound like a great idea, but I can't access your site.

This is the warning that I get from Trend Micro on my router:

Warning! The website contains malware. Visiting this site may harm your computer. Detailed informations:

    Description:
    Malicious Domain or website, Domains that host malicious payloads.
    Host: 94:35:0A:EB:B6:D8
    URL: catelus.com
Maybe a false positive, or a puppy with a bad history?
armenarmen
Thanks for taking a look, I'll get on trying to fix that!
pedalpete
This is great! I was looking for a domain name a few months ago and was typing keywords into google translate trying to find something that was decent and available.

Nicely done.

armenarmen
I was going through the same thing, thanks for taking a look!
tedmiston
Your concept is pretty cool.

On a technical note, something is causing two issues in iOS Safari: extreme lag when typing each character in the search box, and something is crashing the page and forcing a reload between hitting search and seeing results (sometimes).

phantom_oracle
That massive background image of the dog is a resource-hog. Just remove it and the site-loading will improve greatly.