Global by Design

Google’s new “cross language” search tool that I mentioned last week is now live and ready for testing at translate.google.com.

I gave the tool a brief run-through today and it is definitely rough around the edges. To get the best results you really need to put some thought into the search queries you enter — the [...]

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Google held its Searchology event today and formally launched its “universal” search interface.
And, according to Wired, Google will be launching its Cross Language Information Retreival “soon.”
Cross language search allows you to translate your search query into another language and have the search results translated back into your language in real time. So if you want [...]

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Here are some thoughts from the past two days of the Idiom User Summit, in no particular order:
- There was a lot of buzz around machine translation (MT). Both Systran and Language Weaver are here and there were (at least) four sessions devoted to integrating Idiom WorldServer with MT. More important, the translation agencies and [...]

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The members of the Translation Automation User Society met recently and agreed to develop a business plan for hosting and sharing translation memories (TMs).
TMs have historically been something that companies developed for their own internal use — to cut translation costs and improve consistency and quality. But last year TM Marketplace, profiled in the [...]

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Lionbridge issued a press release today that says the company’s new translation management platform, Freeway/Logoport, was the fastest-growing translation management tool in 2006. Freeway is the Web-based front-end of the application and Logoport is the translation memory engine (I’m still not quite sure why there are two names used). For the reason behind the two [...]

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Last week, I posted the article that I wrote about Language Weaver and their statistical machine translation software. While I was at the Language Weaver offices, I also had time to record a 10-minute interview with CEO Bryce Benjamin.
I’ve posted the first few minutes of the interview. Click on the image below to view it [...]

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Okay, so I finally got around to reviewing 2006 stats for Global by Design. My goal is to install a real-time “most popular” sidebar; until then, here are the most popular entries:
Baidu vs. Google: Round Two
The World According to Wikipedia
Just Don’t Do It: The Art of Slogan Translation
China and Japan: So Close But Yet [...]

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Statistical machine translation is an innovative way of automatically translating text from one language into another. It’s being used by Google, it’s being used in Iraq, and it’s being commercialized by a company called Language Weaver.
I profiled this company for the December issue of Global by Design and now we’re making the full article available [...]

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Language Weaver, a machine translation (MT) software developer, has announced a $4 million VC infusion. This is just another sign that MT is inching closer to real-world/commercial applications.
Slowly but surely we’re seeing companies make limited use of MT to translate text that would have been cost-prohibitive to translate manually. SDL recently launched such a service.
I’m [...]

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