But which engine offers the highest quality translations? I’m assuming Google, but this is only based on anecdotal feedback and personal experience.

Years ago, IBM developed an algorithmic method of measuring MT quality known as the BLEU score. Google scored well here, but the BLEU score is not without its critics.

Translation, like writing itself, is as much an art as it is a science.

Which is why translators are best positioned to judge the quality of machine translation engines. And although even translators are going to disagree as well, if you get enough of them together, perhaps you can begin to draw statistically significant conclusions.

Enter Ethan Shen and his start-up venture Gabble On.

Ethan has set out to recruit a few thousand volunteer translators to compare the three free translation engines. He asked me to help get out the word. He promises that he will publish the results for all to see. He’s also offering a free Apple iPad to one lucky volunteer. I have no financial interest in the project. I’m just curious to see what engine comes out on top.

Here are the details from Ethan:

We are seeking functional to fluent speakers of any two languages to take 5 minutes to judge and submit their opinion in our dynamic comparison engine (until March 29, 2010). At the end of the 6 week voting period, we will be publishing our results publicly in hopes that our research can to contribute meaningfully to the body of knowledge in this field.

In gratitude for your participation, we are awarding one new Apple iPad to a lucky participant. The survey can be found at: www.gabble-on.com/SurveySelector.aspx.

Which engine do you think is best?

Back when I started out, I wasn’t sure how long I would stick with this “blogging” thing and I didn’t really want to make any investment in software (besides time).

I tried a few different platforms before settling on WordPress.

It was free — certainly a selling point. But it’s wasn’t the easiest blog to install or maintain in the early years. ISPs weren’t exactly offering it as a one-click install back then. And don’t get me started on the challenges of updating plug-ins.

But WordPress has certainly come a long way.

I was surprised to learn that, thanks to volunteer contributions, WordPress is now available in more languages than Blogger or TypePad.

• TypePad is available in nine languages.
• Blogger/Blogspot (owned by Google) is available in 49 languages.

WordPress is available in more than 60 languages.

Not bad.

And now WordPress is now launching a software translation platform: GlotPress.

Makes sense. Offer to others the very platform you used to localize your software.

I’ll be interested to see how this new platform develops.

1. The rise of “international” English — otherwise known as American English
2. Of Kosovo and .ks
3. Bing Beats Google in Insta-translation
4. Facebook: From 1 to 100 languages in two years
5. Is this the next language icon?
6. Google Translate now in 41 languages
7. Three rules of global gateway design
8. Kindle goes international, but not multilingual
9. Bit.ly is leaving Libya for the islands
10. Countryless Country Codes

Perennial Favorites
Don’t ask me why these posts continue to rank highly, but they do:

• Starbucks CEO on Globalization: Don’t Go Changing
• Watch out ProZ, here comes Google Translation Center
• Google vs. Baidu: A User Experience Analysis
• Is Facebook “translation worthy” or just plain cheap?
• iTunes Going Global

Happy New Year everyone!

I’m really looking forward to 2010…

Here it is in Spanish…

And Chinese…

And, my favorite, “pirate English”…

Thanks largely to volunteer translators, Facebook has localized from one to 70 languages in two years. (Personally, I think we need more of the goofy ones — I’d so much rather “Adjust me riggins” than “Change settings” or change the “Settins o’ me piracy” than my “Privacy Settings.” I’m thinking of volunteering to do “Snarky English” myself.)

If you’re a translator, there’s a link on Facebook (on the language setting page) where you can find out more. And if you’re interested in more where this came from, check out our new report, coming in 2010.

London-based Today Translations is doing just that — offering a Name Audit Service for soon-to-be parents.

Do you think Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes would have chosen Suri for their daughter had they known it meant “pickpocket” in Japanese?

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

According to the agency’s web site:

Name changes later in life can be embarrassing, expensive and riddled with hassle. That’s why we offer a Name Translation Audit designed to help you consider the multilingual implications of giving your baby an unusual name.

For just £1,000, our brilliant team of 2600 linguists will check the meaning of baby names in 100 languages. Better safe than Suri.

Isn’t your baby worth it?

And TED, which has been using the crowd to provide translation of its videos, is looking for a few more participants. Here’s a recent blog posting:

Wanted: Translators
The goal of TED’s Open Translation Project is to bring ideas worth spreading to the wider world by offering TEDTalks with subtitles in as many languages as possible. Still, many of the world’s languages aren’t yet represented in the project, and we want to fill those gaps. Today, we’re putting out a call to translators worldwide to help us translate the languages that the project hasn’t yet covered.

We’re looking for translators who speak these languages, in particular:

• Akan
• Assamese
• Filipino
• Galician
• Gujarati
• Icelandic
• Khmer
• Maltese
• Marathi
• Mongolian
• Nepali
• Panjabi
• Sinhala
• Tagalog
• Tibetan
• Tswana
• Yoruba
• Zulu

In some cases, translations in the languages above have already been completed, but remain unpublished because they still need to be reviewed. (Some of the languages only have one translator.)

These languages aren’t exactly what the translation industry would call Tier 1. That is, there simply isn’t as deep pool of translators to draw from. Which is why any crowdsourcing strategy must take into account the size of the potential crowd.

So how is TED doing so far with its crowdsourcing project?

This menu should give you an idea of what languages are covered and to what extent. Chinese and Brazilian Portuguese are doing best by far.

For roughly six months of work, TED appears to be doing quite well.

Was there any doubt that Twitter would not try to crowdsource its translations?

After Facebook proved that it could use volunteers to go from 1 to 100 languages in two years, it was just a matter of time before Twitter adopted the same model.

Twitter is starting out with the FIGS (French, Italian, German, and Spanish). And here is a video tutorial from Twitter that shows you how how the platform works.

Crowdsourcing is the new black these days, and much of it deserved. But despite the buzz, companies should be very careful before embracing the model.

Very few companies are translation-worthy

Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, TED, and Twitter have legions of fans who are happy to lend their translation skills. But few corporate sites or services are so translation worthy. And there’s the ever-constant risk of translator backlash or burnout. We are in uncharted territory, and as more companies pursue this model, we’re going to see more and more efforts backfire. Hey, maybe we’ll even see companies begin to “pay” their volunteers in non-monetary forms of compensation. Which leads me to…

Crowdsourcing may not save you much on translation

The translation platform, the management of the platform, the management of the volunteers — they all require resources. And the odds are that you’ll still want to retain professional translators to manage the amateurs, which is not a bad thing. There is a peace of mind in having a vendor who does this sort of thing for a living signing off on a newly localized web site before it goes live. In the end, translation crowdsourcing is not about saving money.

As far as I can tell, Twitter has only a thousand or so text strings that require translation. In the time the company devoted to building this translation platform, it could probably have had the site localized in 50 or more languages.

Over time there probably will be cost savings, but I would argue that cost savings should not be the motivator and probably wasn’t the motivator for Twitter.

The platform companies develop to support crowdsourcing should have other measures of success, such as user engagement and testing, partner opportunities, and developer involvement.

For example, on the Twitter Translate information page, this paragraph jumped out at me:

Will my favorite applications be translated, too?
We know that Twitter is not all about Twitter.com, so our global reach shouldn’t be limited to Twitter.com either. That’s why we’re planning to give our developer community access to the translation files so they can create wonderful apps that use the translations, too.

This is where Twitter is headed with the platform, as well as Facebook and Google. Once you have the platform, you can get creative with it — expand it to developers so that they can quickly localize their apps. You can even try to open up the platform for “partner” sites to use — which is what Facebook is now doing.

As companies comes to grips with social media, they are slowly learning to let go. Employees blog and tweet. Customers post content on corporate sites, and now they are co-creating the localized products.

The top-down localization model is giving way to the bottom-up model, and this is a profound change, even if it’s limited to a handful of companies — albeit companies that represent a few hundred million users. I’m still trying to understand how far this phenomenon will go.

But hey, those slogans are cool to look at, right?

Here are two German examples:

I wrote about this phenomenon back in 2006, when I predicted that companies would eventually do away with global slogans. It seems to me that the next generation of global brands won’t have them and won’t need them. I pointed out at the time that Google didn’t have a global slogan, but apparently I overlooked YouTube. Even Google has fallen for a lure of the global slogan.

Nike tried to translate “Just Do It” but gave up and just used the slogan globally. So perhaps the “global slogan” is here to stay.

But my advice to companies just getting started — avoid them if you can. The risks generally outweigh the rewards.

Until there is a “global consumer” there is no such thing as a “global slogan.”

The position is with a very large global company based outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Here is the job description:

The Marketing Manager-Localizations position will report to the Mgr-Localization and Content Management and lead the daily operations of the Global Information Management System. This includes working with the technology team to support workflows and issue escalation as well as liaising with affiliate counterparts via global meetings and phone calls. Also includes defining TM strategies and recommending future direction.  Priorities include localization project execution, resource assignments, and user administration as well as issue management. This role helps in developing ongoing strategies for future implementations and integrations.

The successful individual will leverage their proficiency to…

• Deep knowledge of the SDL WorldServer system
• Sound understanding of linguistic requirements, Translation Memory, Terminology Database and glossary management
• Strong background in Production management
• Technical understanding of functionality and capabilities of the WorldServer system.
• Development of strong partnerships with regional and affiliate localization teams

If you meet the qualifications and are interested, send your resume to me at jyunker (at) bytelevel (dotcom) and I’ll forward it along to the HR manager.

NOTE: That this is not a paid posting and I get no finder’s fee.

Six months later, Google added ten more languages, a two-year growth trajectory illustrated below:

Google went from 13 languages to 51 languages in less than 16 months.

Not bad.

And, yes, I’m aware that we must not confuse quantity of translations with quality of translations. Your translation mileage will most certainly vary by language pair. Still, as language pairs go, Google is the only game in town across many.

Here are the 10 most recently added languages:

• Albanian
• Afrikaans
• Belarusian
• Icelandic
• Irish
• Macedonian
• Malay
• Swahili
• Welsh
• Yiddish

On a related noted, 41 of these languages are now incorporated into Google Docs.

Earlier this year, TED began recruiting volunteers to translate its recorded presentations, known as TED Talks.

It looks like the venture is off to a strong start. According to TED, more than 1,500 volunteer translators have provided more than 1,000 translations in more than 50 languages. And another 1,000 translations are in the works.

September 18, 2009 Update: TED has reached 2,000 translations.

Now, putting aside my concerns about a company getting services for free that it could very well afford, I want to focus on what TED has done well with its web site to facilitate the crowdsourcing of translations:

• All translators have their own profile page (see below)
• Translators get little buttons they can use to promote themselves (see above)
• The translators who have done the most work are highlighted
• The most-translated talks are highlight (see below)

One of the most active translators is Yasser Bahjatt. I like how you can click on the talks that he has translated.

A picky comment: Why is Arabic in Latin script? Wouldn’t it make more sense to use Arabic script? Details, I know, but these details count when you’re trying to create content for people who may not understand any English.

Next, here is a screen shot of the most popular talks — at least among translators:

As TED adds more and more translated content, it’s going to need to devote resources to providing a fully localized user interface (UI).

Right now, TED offers this:

But for the most part, the TED site expects users to know a fair amount of English if they’re going to navigate to their translated content.

Ultimately, TED will have to localize its Web site — or just the Ted Talks section — so that people can more easily find their translated content. And this I suspect won’t come free.

Nevertheless, TED has proven that its content is translation-worthy and it has done a great job of creating a community of translators who are bound to keep the effort alive and growing.

Firefox 3.5 is now out and available in more than 70 languages.

Yes, 70 languages.

Naturally, I was curious to learn how many languages the other browsers currently support. Here is a rough list:

• Internet Explorer 8: 63 languages
• Chrome: 63 languages
• Opera 9.6: 36 languages
• Safari 4: 16 languages

I say “rough” because I didn’t verify every language and I might be off by one or two. I was surprised at how few languages Safari supports; 16 languages used to be a lot not that long ago. But not anymore.

And I think it’s safe to say that Firefox is the most global browser on the market today.

If you want to see how popular Firefox is around the world, check out the real-time download map here. The last I checked there were 23 million downloads with 5 million coming from the US, followed by Germany, Japan, and France. I particularly like how you can look up countries by ccTLD.

And on a separate note: If you enjoy watching real-time downloads, here’s another map that I found oddly hypnotizing — Zappos purchases as they happen: www.zappos.com/map/

For now, I’d like you to try entering the following text strings into both Bing and Google (to save you time I created pre-loaded hyperlinks):

• Translate I love you: Bing vs. Google
• Translate I love you into Chinese: Bing vs. Google
• How do you say I love you in Italian: Bing vs. Google

Below are screen shots of the first text string in both Bing and Google. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:

Google, despite its massively powerful translation engine, doesn’t simply answer your translation question. Instead, it provides links.

I realize that this is a relatively minor feature and that it currently only supports a small number of very common text strings, but it’s still a very handy feature for a translation geek such as myself.

Now, I’m not saying Bing is perfect. When it comes to technical searches — or when I just need to look up a Wikipedia article quickly — Google still does better, sometimes far better.

But I’m glad to see Bing integrating translation in an intuitive way. It’s a feature that I’ll be using again.

PS: Here is the blog announcement of this feature from Microsoft Translate team.

That said, I do wonder how this article is going to be received by the translators of the world who actually expect to be paid for their services.

For example the for-profit, invite-only conference company TED saved about $500,000 using volunteer translators. Clearly TED could have coughed up the money.

I can see this article spurring on CEOs across the land to think that they too can get free translations.

One thing I mentioned awhile back is that you need to be translation-worthy to get away with pro-bono services, particularly if you’re a for-profit company.

Facebook, Google and, now, TED appear to be translation-worthy. But I wouldn’t expect to see, say, General Motors succeeding in this area (though they could certainly use the help).

But the larger issue here is to the extent that volunteer translation for companies that can afford to pay for translation undermines the translation industry. I don’t believe machine translation undermines human translation because companies generally use it to translation text they would never have hired people to do (or they use it as a first pass before bringing on the human translators).

But volunteer translation is different.

Are  volunteer translators taking money away from their colleagues? After all, TED and Google and Facebook certainly can afford to pay. Or are volunteer translators raising awareness for the value of their work, thereby benefiting the translation industry as a whole?

Personally, I think we’re entering a dangerous area where companies that don’t know better are going to think they don’t have to pay for translation. This all reminds me of Seinfeld’s George Costanza’s aversion to parking garages: Why should I pay, when if I apply myself, maybe I could get it for free?

I’m not sure I agree with this graph, but those were some heady days back in 2000.

From my humble perch, I’d say web globalization is alive and well. Perhaps searches are going down because more and more people already know what it is — at least that’s how I choose to see it.

And while I’m wasting an evening on Google, here’s one of its newest features, the Wonder Wheel:

It’s nifty, though I’m not sure I would use it more than once. And what the heck is Walmart doing there?

Walmart failed in Germany and Korea and is still bleeding cash in Japan — not exactly what I would call a web globalization success story. Walmart finished in the bottom 10 of The Web Globalization Report Card.

In other Google news, I added Friend Connect to this site — up on the upper right corner. Apparently Google now offers real-time translation of comments, so I’m hoping to give it a spin.

Let me know what you think…

UPDATE: I just removed it. It was really slow in loading. Instead I inserted my Twitter feed. I just noticed that the Chinese characters that were supported just fine in Twitter didn’t make it across into my feed as Unicode. This is interesting because I have WordPress setup for Unicode. I’ll have to do some digging.

Maybe I should have titled this post The Rise and Fall of Wordpress Plugins.

As I noted then, the company utilized crowdsourcing to spur its translation efforts. And though volunteers aren’t the only people translating content, a year later, Facebook has done an impressive job of going global.

Om Malik recently reported some key stats from Facebook’s global expansion efforts. Among them:

• Facebook is available in 43 languages and is in the process of being translated into another 60 languages.
• 40 percent of Facebook users are not using English.
• 25,000 volunteers helped translate Facebook into Turkish last year, and there are now 9 million Turkish-language users signed up for Facebook.

Even though only 43 languages are available now, if you add the Facebook Translations application (which i really recommend doing if you’re into this sort of thing), you’ll see the other 60 languages in the pipeline — many of which look pretty much good to go.

Here’s what the Translations pull-down menu looks like:

So many languages my computer is lacking for fonts.

It’s a very safe bet to say that Facebook will support more than 100 languages a year from now.

The post I wrote on the Google Translation Center has been the most-visited page on this blog over the past month. Clearly, Google has struck a nerve in the translation industry — and its service is not even live yet.

The Translation Automation User Society does not appear to be as welcoming as I am of the Google Translation Center. A new essay on its site says:

Private companies will always seek world domination and customer lock-in. As a professional in the translation industry, the Google Translation Centre may help you on the short-term, but you only help Google long-term and you don’t help the world at all. Ultimately we pay the price for putting all translated words and sentences in the possession of a single company.

There is a distinct “evil empire” tone to this essay, which is understandable to a point. Google appears to be entering that evil empire stage of its development. Though I still use the search engine.

And the last I checked, Google’s “terms and services” page for the Translation Center had been taken down. So I can’t really say what Google’s policy will be regarding the translation memory (TM) that it may or may not leverage from this Center.

But it is no coincidence that TAUS is planning to develop a massive database of TMs of its own. I’m sure it wants readers to come away thinking that TAUS is going to be far more open with its TMs than Google will be.

TAUS says that its TM database will be free to the world for the looking up of translations of terms and phrases. But you’ll have to be a member to actually have access to the database (on a reciprocal basis) and membership is not free. I’m confident that this database will be of the highest quality as TAUS has some impressive corporate members, such as Intel, Microsoft, and Oracle (Google does not appear to be a member).

Personally, I’m glad to see both services emerging — as well as services from Asia Online and Language Weaver (which is now offering a Web-based SaaS translation service). We are entering uncharted waters and it’s important to have a mix of large and small players, as well as a nonprofit, to keep everyone on their toes.

Is there a risk to the world if Google owns the world’s largest TM (which it might have already accomplished)?

Perhaps.

TAUS raises important questions. The answers have yet to emerge.

My biggest concern is slow-loading Web pages. And, yes, I know the quality of the translation will leave plenty to be desired, but what I really like about the widget are the little RSS feed buttons. Just click the button and you can have translated feeds delivered to whatever feed reader you use.

What I don’t understand is the significance of the name “mloovi.” Am I missing something?

But here comes Google…

According to Blogoscoped, Google is about to launch the Google Translation Center.

This is an exciting development, though I don’t expect everyone to suddenly ditch ProZ for Google. Why? Because much of the appeal of ProZ is the community, which Google does not appear to be trying to support. Still, freelancers will certainly want to investigate this potential new resource.

I’ve called out ProZ as one company under threat from Google Translation Center. But EVERY translation agency needs to keep a close eye on this service. It could be a threat. It could also end up being something translation agencies use themselves — instead of paid platforms from SDL. Naturally, for this to happen this new platform has a lot of evolving to do. Still, I can’t help but wonder.

There is no mention of whether or not Google will support machine translation and/or translation memory. I’m assuming they will.

I have LOTS of questions and this service isn’t even live yet. So we shall see what happens. But this is big news, no question.

I wrote awhile back, that the translation industry as we know it is over. The technologists have taken over and they’re bringing brute force computing and massive networks to the table to reduce costs and increase time to market. This is just another sign of this macro trend.

What do you think? Is Google going to disrupt the translation industry or is this new platform going to fall flat?

(Thx Chris for the heads up!)

Update: I just read an insightful article on this Google’s service at GigaOm…

As a result of the worldwide success of Facebook’s translation system, the company has opened up the Translation Application to any developer using Facebook Platform. Beginning today, any Facebook developer can make their application available in any of the 20 languages that are currently available on Facebook, with 69 more coming soon.

Developers can now access the Translation Application to either translate their applications themselves, or open up translation of their application to Facebook users around the world, who will work together to define it in their native languages.

Developers are naturally very excited about this development because they can tap into the same group of enthusiastic volunteers who are currently translating Facebook’s interface into different languages. Or, developers can pay translators or agencies to do the translation.

Facebook knows that part of the value of its platform are the third-party applications. As I mentioned a few days ago, I was concerned that so many of Apple’s iPhone apps are currently in English only. And it’s safe to say that Apple is nowhere close to launching anything similar to what Facebook is now doing.

As Facebook goes global with its platform, it wants all of its 400,000 developers (more than half of which live outside of the US) to come along as well. Opening up the translation platform is a win-win for everyone.

And we could see Facebook’s translation platform become a force onto itself.

It will be interesting to see what role translation agencies and freelance translators will play. I see a nice opportunity, because some of these app developers will want to pay a premium to have professional translators involved.

PS: Techcrunch also shares some data on Facebook’s global traffic growth — a sign that this translation program is perfectly timed.

So after a slow start upgrading to the iPhone 2.0 OS on Friday, I’ve since had a chance to review a number of the apps and have been very impressed so far (though a few did cause the iPhone to crash).

As I reviewed the Apps in the iTunes store I began to notice that they were available only in English. Here is a screen grab from the AOL IM app:

Just to be sure about this, I also visited iTunes Spain and looked up the same AOL IM App. And as you see here, it is available only in English:

As far as I can tell, the only iPhone App currently available in a language other than English is Apple’s own Remote App, available in these languages:

I know it’s early yet. But keep in mind that the iPhone launched globally on Friday, which means there are a lot of markets that have a localized iPhone but only one fully localized iPhone App to use on them.

This means there is a HUGE opportunity for the software localization vendors of the world to help these software developers take these apps global. Apple says it sold one million iPhones over the past three days — and 10 million apps.

Here are some of the companies that currently offer non-localized apps: eBay, MySpace, Bloomberg, Travelocity, MLB.com, Oracle, and Salesforce.com.

If you spot any iPhone Apps that have been localized outside of English, please let me know. This will be very interesting to follow…

UPDATE: Adam Houser just alerted me to  Anime Match by Jirbo, shown here:

This app is available in Japanese. It’s a catchy little game actually — and free!

Google features a 4th of July logo at Google.com today.

This is not all that unusual; Google has been doing this for several years now. But there is an inherent flaw in hosting an American visual at Google.com: The .com address is not synonymous with USA.

I know, it’s a picky thing. And yet it’s not such a picky thing. I work with numerous multinationals that now host their American Web sites at the .us domain — and their global Web sites at the .com domain. This makes perfect sense.

And yet Google, in applying the American visual to the .com site, perpetuates this idea that .com is a uniquely American URL.

Granted, Google doesn’t show residents of France and Germany and other countries this visual even if they input Google.com; Google uses geolocation to serve up localized Web pages based on the Web user’s location.

I understand Google has a dilemma on its hands. Because most Americans believe .com to be an American domain, Google might appear unpatriotic if it didn’t continue this .com/4th of July tradition.

But what I would like to see happen is Google launching a .us search engine. Not only would Google benefit from having another country country code to monetize, but those multinationals that currently host .us Web sites would be rewarded for their efforts.

Being the globalization geek that I am, I couldn’t help but check out the home page of Yahoo! Spain, which features a localized header, shown here:

And then I noticed that the home page of Yahoo! Germany was also localized for the home team.

So who the heck was Yahoo! rooting for?

Everyone, it seems.

Which highlights a delicate issue for multinational Web sites — that of not appearing to root for one country over another. The golden rule of course is to simply treat each country equally. This is easy to do when it comes to localizing headers, but not so easy when it comes to providing equal levels of customer support, product documentation, and so on.

Yahoo! is not alone in navigating these waters. Here is Google Germany:

Interestingly, you can’t view this German page by simply entering google.de. You need to use a German-based IP proxy.

And now here’s my second Web globalization thought: Why does the Euro 2008 Web site support vastly more languages than the Beijing Olympics Web site?

Here is the Euro site, with support for 9 languages.

And here is the Olympics site, with support for just English, French, and Chinese.

I find it ironic that an event that is billed as a global event supports fewer languages than an event that has Euro in its title. Euro 2008 even supports Japanese, Chinese, and Korean even though these countries don’t have participating teams.

I realize that the Olympic Charter specifies just two official languages: English and French. And the host country generally adds its local language to the mix as well. This rule makes sense for signage, announcements, etc. But I don’t see why the Web site should support only three languages.

The argument can be made by the Olympics that they simply cannot justify financially supporting every language of every participating country. But I still don’t buy it. If Euro2008 can support 9 languages, the Olympics can and should do better than three.

And this is particularly true in China, where people pay thousands of dollars to obtain license plates with lucky numbers.

So when it comes to naming products or setting prices, you have to be very careful about your choice of numbers. Here are some tips:

6 means “good fortune.”
8 means “abundance of wealth” or “make lots of money.”

The number 8 is a very lucky number, and the reason why China chose August 8th, 2008 to kick off Olympics Games. Vehicle license plates and cellphone numbers containing 6 or 8 are coveted and often auctioned to the highest bidder. A recent example: A C88888 vehicle license was auctioned in Guangdong where it sold for RMB800,000 (around USD113,000). The new owner hopes this license number helps bring good fortune — though presumably the owner was already fortunate enough to have the money to spend on the license plate.

9 means “forever.”

If a boy wants to buy a rose for his girlfriend, he will typically buy 9 roses. If he wants to splurge, he’ll buy 19 roses — and if he’s affluent, he’ll buy 99 roses. September 9th is Senior People Day in China, to ensure that th elderly live a healthy and long life.

4 is pronounced the same as “dead.”
13 means crazy, abnormal.

If a Chinese person says “you are 13″, it means “you are insane!” Some buildings, like in the US, avoid having a 13th floor. Instead, they use floor 12B. And although the pronunciation of 4 sounds like “dead,” there is a positive way to portray the number: In a musical scale, 4 is equialent to “fa,” which is pronounced closely to “make money” in Chinese. My old phone number contains “5854″ and my Chinese friends say it is a great number because it means “I make money and then I make money again.” I am happy to hear their comments.

51 in Chinese is pronounces like “I (5) wanna (1).”

You’ll find a lot of businesses and Websites using 51 in their names. 51job is the largest online human resources company. So you can tell a lot about a company simply by the numbers it uses in its domain name. Since 1 sounds like “wanna,” the number 18 is also popular as “wanna make money” and many people will choose the 18th of the month as a new business opening date or a wedding date.

Even numbers > odd numbers

Chinese people like to use even numbers rather than odd numbers because even number are related to the concept of “pairs” which usually means “perfect” in Chinese culture.

With regards to business, if a company produces different versions of products, expect them to produce 6, 8, or 12, 36 different versions. And you can always find prices like 88.00, 128.00; 156.00 in China’s shopping malls.

I’m referring to the breadth of languages and breadth of features that Google Translate supports.

Today, Google announced that Google Translate added support for ten more languages, bringing the total to 23. The ten new languages are Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish.

And that’s not all!

Google Translate also now provides a detect language tool that will tell what language a batch of text is in. This type of tool can come in awfully handy for people like me who navigate across so many languages on a daily basis. It’s an easy feature for Google to support because the translation engine needs to know what the source language is before translating it. But I also tested language detect on a few languages not yet supported for translation, such as Slovakian, and the engine correctly identified them.

A week ago, I integrated Google Translate into the home page of Byte Level:

When it comes to translation, I’m not a good example of “putting my money where my mouth is.” Byte Level Research, with the exception of the Tower of Babel site, has been available only in English for years.

While I have no illusions that this widget will make up for a lack of professionally translated text, I am curious to see if people use it and to what extent. What I need to know is if Google Analytics can track Google Translate widget usage so I can know which languages are most popular. If anyone knows how to set this up, please contact me.

And, if nothing else, it’s an interesting experiment — and it buys me time before having to shell out real money for professional translation, which I will ultimately need to do.

MySpace is also busy building localized Web sites.

I reviewed both Facebook and MySpace for the 2008 Web Globalization Report Card, as part of the newly added Social Networking category. Also included in this category were Orkut, Last.fm, and a company based out of Germany called XING.

XING supports 15 languages, not including English, and an impressive language navigation interface. Which is why XING emerged on top of the Social Networking category. Facebook finished in last place.

But I should stress that Facebook and MySpace are only just getting started. Next year, we could very well see a different leader emerge.

SDL has posted an FAQ page about the deal here — but the list is absent a question I recently posed:

Does this acquisition mark the beginning of the end of SDL being a translation services provider?

I think it does. Or, at least, I think it should.

I haven’t received an official answer from SDL to this question. My guess is that SDL will say that it has many clients who want a full-service solution and that it will continue to offer these customers a full-service solution.

Nevertheless, SDL is much more of a software company these days than a translation services company. SDL has been gobbling up software companies over the past year and now owns some of the best translation workflow and content management tools on the planet, most notably Tridion and now Idiom. At some point it will have to ask if the benefits of providing translation services are outweighed by the negatives, which become more acute with the Idiom acquisition.

Idiom, as many folks in the industry know, had been living on borrowed time for quite some time. It was subsidized by the investment community going back 10 years. These investors wanted a return on their investment and Idiom needed a buyer who could give it a larger infrastructure and sales team.

Early last year, I heard from two up-and-coming translation agencies that were taking a hard look at buying Idiom. That SDL would buy Idiom can be viewed as much as a defensive move as an offensive move. And I think the timing is good because Idiom finally hit its stride in 2007.

I attended the Idiom Summit in 2007 and there was a real sense of excitement and optimism in the air. I wrote about the company in October, noting two developments in particular:

The “Full-Service” vs. “Freedom of Choice” Divide Widens
Idiom has been steadily positioning itself against SDL. Where SDL may call itself a “full service” solution, Idiom calls itself a “freedom of choice” solution. That is, SDL can provide you with CMS software, translation memory (TM) software, and actual translation services.

Idiom, on the other hand, provides only globalization management software, leaving the client free to select translators (or translation agency), CMS tools providers, and so on. Some clients may want to stick with separate vendors for different products and services — which benefits Idiom — while others may want a full-service SDL solution. This positioning makes good sense because it makes things clearer for clients who are often very confused by the array of products and terminology.

Demand for On-Demand Growing
Idiom thought that its On-Demand software would appeal mainly to small customers, but a number of large customers are now using it, such as Bank of America and HP’s internal translation group.

One interesting reason that Web-based software has been popular with some companies is that you don’t need to dedicate an IT team to getting started. Ironically, we have found that marketing executives in large companies with very skilled IT departments often feel as if they have very limited IT support because they must “take a number.” The Web-based solution allows a marketing team to bypass IT almost entirely. Even if they want to buy the software, they can use on-demand as a run-up to it. Idiom reports that 50% of its sales pipeline is devoted to Idiom On-Demand.

What happens when a “full service” company buys a “freedom of choice” company?
Right now, SDL says that Idiom is going to remain an autonomous company. And I suspect that many Idiom clients won’t particularly care if SDL is the new parent — and may actually be quite happy to get translation services from SDL.

But what about Idiom’s very popular “LSP Advantage Program” — in which it basically gave away its software to a large network of translation agencies. These agencies had played an important role in Idiom’s growth, functioning as a channel sales partner.

I spoke to the owner of a smaller translation agency — and Idiom partner — last year and mentioned that there was talk about Idiom being acquired by a larger translation agency. He was not at all happy to hear this. It’s safe to say that none of these translation agencies are happy with SDL owning their workflow software.

I’m not surprised to see this press release from across Systems today. Thebigword is promoting an alternative to Idiom as well. Meanwhile, Translations.com is marketing a “safe passage program” for clients who want to migrate away from SDL/Idiom.

SDL surely expected this reaction from its competitors. And all this confusion could actually help SDL sell more translation services as the smaller agencies find themselves migrating to new software tools. At a minimum, the next year promises to be very chaotic in the mid-tier of the services market, which could bode well for the leaders, which includes Lionbridge.

I believe that Idiom is an excellent acquisition for SDL, provided that SDL can hold onto Idiom’s network of supportive and enthusiastic translation agencies. If not, SDL risks giving rise (and momentum) to a “son of Idiom” in the years ahead.

I think SDL would be best served to focus fully on software — on streamlining its large and complex portfolio — and in letting the translation services vendors do what they do best. A SDL Services spin-off would make sense as well.

Perhaps SDL is already planning this. I hope to hear more from them in the days ahead and will keep you posted as I do.

The second annual Global Intranet Strategies Survey conducted from June through August 2007 revealed some starting facts about the true state of globalization behind the firewall.

78 organizations around the world participated, representing 45% headquartered in Europe, 43% in North America, 10% in Asia-Pacific and 2% in other parts of the world. Over half have more than 15,000 employees, including 8% with 50 to 100,000 employees and 13% with over 100,000 employees.

This article highlights some of the issues dealt with in the survey concerning globalization in intranets: languages, localization, collaboration, customization and global teams.

Single language is prevalent, translation is rudimentary
The study shows that although two thirds of the participating companies are present in many countries, they tend to have a single corporate language. Approximately 3 out of 5 say they are primarily a “single-language” organization and have “single-language” intranet.

Those who do deal in multi-language contexts struggle with translation issues. The translation process is largely a manual one, with few that using technologies such as integration of the translation process into the CMS or translation memory software solutions. The percentages below show the proportion of companies saying the tool or process either exists throughout or in some parts of their organization (figures based on the 72 out of 178 companies who translate intranet content):

Multi-lingual glossaries – 38%
Machine translation – 19%
Translation memory software – 10%
Integration of translation into the Content management system – 11%
Definition of a clear process among the people involved in translations – 31%

Localization: A 3-step process
Effective localization strategies start with a global strategy and pass through the intermediary step of internationalization as defined below before reaching the localization level. 35% of the companies in the survey population have a globalization strategy, which was defined as “defining systems, procedures based on the whole organization, such as global teams, standardizing intranet-related processes across the organization, sharing resources across the organization.”

28% say they practice internationalization, defined as “creating models for templates, guidelines, content that can easily be adapted to local needs without needing to revise the model, such as menu structures, customization, navigation, meta data.” Only 24% have localization strategies, defined as “procedures for adapting internationalized models to meet local needs, such as specific navigation, template adaptations, content strategies, language, etc.”

Collaboration: Not yet optimized globally
Intranets are not yet optimized for collaboration among employees. Globalization of companies means that people around the world who do not know each other need to work in teams together. Virtual teams become essential workplaces for global companies. However, only 20% of the companies say their employees perceive collaboration as one of the primary objectives of the intranet. However, between 30 and 40% have collaborative spaces integrated into the intranet.

The top 3 collaboration tools rated as “optimized” or “in general use” in the consolidated results of all 178 enterprises are (1) web conferencing at 31%, (2) shared calendars at 30% and (3) instant messaging at 23%. The usage of these and other collaborative tools by companies who say the intranet has become the “way of working” internally is dramatically higher than in companies where the intranet is not yet “the way of working”.

Customization: A necessity to remain relevant
All global organizations struggle to define strategies for how to offer common content to everyone, helping to build a shared culture, and proposing customized content to users, making them more efficient and satisfied. The survey shows that half or more of the content and services on intranets is “automatically delivered by the system according to the person’s profile” in 23% of the organizations. However, only 8% offer “personalizable content – explicit choices made by the person him/herself” for half or more of the content. Once again, companies where the intranet is the way of working today have intranets with a higher degree of personalization that the other companies.

Global teams and steering committees smooth the way
Global intranet teams are essential if an organization wishes to ensure that an intranet meets user and business needs around the world. However, global teams exist in only 31% of the organizations with another 12% “planned.” Steering committees with decision-making power should have representation from all parts of the organization. In fact they exist in 46% of the cases with another 10% “planned.”

The survey shows that certain major obstacles are significantly decreased in the cases where these global bodies exist. Examples are out of date information, unclear navigation and difficulties getting content producers to contribute. All these issues exist to a greater extent in companies where there are no global teams or global decision-making bodies.

Future trends

• Both customization and the availability of collaboration tools will increase. This is clear from the markedly higher usage in enterprises where the intranet is the way of working today.
• Portals will become more common, thereby requiring the ability to be customized in order to remain relevant. 38% of those who do not currently have portal solutions plan to move in that direction in terms of intranet structures.
• The number of languages in an intranet will increase over time, according to 38% of the participants. Hopefully translation will be facilitated by the use of technology, but the number of responses indicating plans in this area is very low.
• “User-centered design and usability” is the leading area of planned investment over 2008 and 2009. 60% of the respondents expressed it as their number one area. Acquisition of new tools such as content management systems, search engines, statistics tool were further down the list.

Conclusion
Intranets are slowing moving up the value chain in the mind of the average senior executive. The proportion of organizations where senior management considers the intranet to be business critical increased from 13% in 2006 to 17.5% in 2007. This is low, but at least the number is rising.

A manager in a country distant from headquarters of his organization says, “The farther you are from the center, the more you need the intranet. But the farther you are from the center, the less the intranet meets your needs.” Companies who understand this can take big steps towards making their intranet relevant to all employees, whoever and wherever they are. It requires strategy and investment in the areas mentioned in this article. In the end, the intranet will become a tool that brings value to both employees and the business as the enterprise gradually becomes truly global.

Stay tuned for the 2008 survey to see if progress is being made in this area!

About the Author
Jane McConnell is an intranet and portal strategy specialist. She founded NetStrategy/JMC in 2001 and works primarily with companies and organizations with complex intranets and challenges. McConnell writes the column International Intranets for the magazine Intranets: Enterprise Strategies and Solutions (Information Today). Her English blog is Globally Local & Locally Global and the French one is Carnet intranet. She initiated the Annual Global Intranet Strategies Survey in 2006, and published the 2007 results in the form of two reports that can be purchased: Global Intranet Trends and Global Intranet Analysis. More information is available on www.netjmc.com or by contacting Jane at jane@netjmc.com.

Lionbridge evaluated the sites of Clinton, Obama, and Edwards on the Democratic site and Romney on the Republican side. It appears that Huckabee and McCain have more or less given up on the Spanish vote, as they offer no Spanish content.

The Clinton site offers 210 Spanish language pages versus 2,482 English language web page — 8.4%.

I know, this doesn’t sound like much, but it’s well ahead of Romney’s site, with just 4% translated content, and Obama’s paltry 1%.

What about Edwards? Edwards offers only one page of translated content, what I typically call a “local façade.”

I realize that language is a thorny issue these days, as it calls to mind thornier issue: immigration.

Nevertheless, Hispanic voters make up 9% of the electorate and could play a large role later this year in picking the next president.

Lionbridge also commented on several other issues, like quality, content, and navigation. Speaking of navigation, I like how Lionbridge notes that placing the “Español” link in the upper right corner is a best practice. This is something I have advocated for a number of years and I’m happy to say that more and more companies (and candidates) are placing their global gateways in this general vicinity.

To learn more, check out the press release.

Crowdsourcing is a hot new buzzword that is best illustrated by Wikipedia — you take a lot of motivated volunteers, give them access to your Web site, and let them go crazy. I’m simplifying things of course, and crowdsourcing is no cure-all. People sometimes game the system for various reasons. But the net result can amount to something that could never have been created without the crowd involvement.

Now, Wikipedia has next to no money and it’s a non-profit; crowdsourcing is not just a great strategy but a necessity.

And crowdsourcing can be a great way to localize your Web site.

Google relied on crowdsourcing in its early years to translate its search engine interface into more than 60 languages (and still relies on the technique in more limited ways today). Netvibes relied on volunteer translators to quickly localize its interface into more than 60 languages.

Naturally, the idea of having your Web site translated for “free” is alluring to a lot of companies. But very few companies will find that they are translation worthy. Web users will not bother to translate a Web interface if they don’t actually see a need to use the product itself in their native language.

So Is Facebook Translation Worthy?

You can’t fault Facebook for trying to get some free translation help, and I suspect that it will find plenty of volunteer translators, though it will take time. But a part of me can’t help wondering why the company hasn’t just coughed up a few dollars to get its localization efforts moving sooner rather than later. After all, doesn’t the company have a market value of, like, $100 billion?

The challenge with crowdsourcing translations is that nothing is truly free. Facebook has to dedicate people and resources to create the translation workflow and approval processes to ensure that the finished translations are of high quality. These things take time, and time also costs money.

Given the importance of acting quickly when it comes to taking social networking sites global, it seems to me that Facebook would be wise to pay for localization for some core languages and then use crowdsourcing to support the less-strategic languages. This way, Facebook could accelerate tackling those markets that are already seeing Facebook knockoffs (like the Russian knockoff shown below).

Relying on volunteers to translate content is an emerging trend — one that can give a company a tremendous advantage over its competition. And I think we’ll see many more companies try this strategy in the years ahead.

But before getting started, ask yourself: Is our Web site translation worthy?

UPDATE: Techcrunch provides additional details on Facebook’s translation efforts.

• Arabic/Spanish
• Arabic/French
• French/Spanish
• Danish/English
• Greek/English

What’s interesting here is that Language Weaver is moving beyond language pairs that include English.

English is the “pivot language” of the translation industry, in which content either begins in English or is converted into English on its way to its target language. Taking English out of the equation isn’t easy, because there is often a smaller translation corpora to build upon, but it is ultimately where companies want and need to go to accelerate translation and improve quality.

Says the Language Weaver press release:

In international markets, companies want to be able to translate directly between any two languages. Despite the fact that some of these languages are spoken and written by multi-millions of people, very often English is used as a pivot language for the translation. For example, for an Arabic to French translation, a company might first translate the information from Arabic to English, and then from English to French; this two step process slows the translation down considerably.

Translation software offerings operating directly between languages such as French to Spanish or Arabic to French are less commonly available. However, Language Weaver’s statistically-based approach to translation allows it to quickly develop translation systems between any two languages without using English in the translation process. These less-common language combinations save a step in the translation process and give companies timely access to information.

So here are the top 10 posts of 2007 based on traffic:

1. The Best Global Web Sites of 2007
2. Starbucks CEO on Globalization: Don’t Go Changing This quote from the Starbucks CEO speaks volumes about the company’s success around the world.
3. Which Country; Which Language? A guest article by John Greenwood of InterPro Translation Services continues to be very popular.
4. The Best Global Web Sites (and why) This entry is a nice summary of some of the best practices exhibited by the top sites in the 2007 Report Card.
5. Register.Me Montenegro is getting its own country code (.me) and one can imagine the entertaining possibilities this domain presents for creative URLs.
6. Staples: Asi de Facil Hardly a week goes by that I don’t press my “That was easy” button, translated in Spanish. They sell a lot of these here in San Diego. I’m still waiting for the Chinese version.
7. If The World Were 100 People This is a personal favorite.
8. Scaling a Great Wall: Top 5 Tips for Learning Chinese This is another guest article, by Saul Gitlin of Kang & Lee, and a very hot topic these days.
9. Just Don’t Do It: The Art of Slogan Translation
10. The Localization of iPhone

So there you have it — the top 10 entries out of the 99 entries posted in 2007. Yes, I know I’m not the most active blogger as bloggers go. But I only blog when the urge strikes and sometimes it just does not strike. Which is probably a good thing.

As Abraham Lincoln once said: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

And on that note I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

So now it’s time to take a deep breath and take a shot at predicting the future of Web globalization. The following predictions are based on current trends as well as gut feelings.

Predictions for the Year Ahead

1. The Weak Dollar Drives US Companies to Greatly Boost Web Globalization Spending
Okay, this was an easy call to make. The weak US dollar is helping companies weather a poor local economy by selling their goods abroad. And this year I’ve noticed a number of companies boosting their Web globalization budgets to expand into new markets or improve their current localized Web sites. All signs point to 2008 being a very busy year for translators and Web localization teams.

It’s also worth highlighting a few companies that invested in Web globalization while the dollar was still strong. It’s no sheer coincidence that some of the companies weathering the US downturn thanks to strong overseas sales are also some of the companies at the top of the 2007 Web Globalization Report Card:

• Google
• HP
• Cisco
• Xerox
• Caterpillar

While a great global Web site does not in itself ensure success, it is a major competitive differentiator as companies expand abroad. And those companies that embraced Web globalization early on are now reaping the rewards.

2. Internationalized Domains Names Become a �Surprise� Hit
I have long been a strong proponent of local-language domain names. Next year, ICANN will launch approved IDNs that the local markets will embrace. The media will report the surprising success these domains see in their respective countries. China in particular will report more than two million registrations in one month (probably in 2009).

The demand for local-language domains is there. Yes, there are plenty of details yet to be worked through at ICANN and there will no doubt be technical and political obstacles along the way — which will also be widely reported by the media. But next year will mark that point in time when the Internet begins to provide a true local-language end-to-end Internet experience for users around the world.

3. China Requires Companies to Register Chinese-Language Domains
China has been the most vocal proponent of IDNs. The government effectively argues that the Internet cannot be user friendly for its citizens until they can enter domain names in the native Chinese script. Now that IDNs are becoming a reality, I expect China to begin requiring companies that wish to do business in China to register IDNs.

China would probably initially require those companies that are licensed to host sites within China to register IDNs, but it may also go after companies that host outside of China as well. There is also a financial incentive for this requirement, as these registrations will benefit state-owned domain registries. Following in China’s steps, Russia will also require the registration of Cyrillic domains, and other countries may also follow.

From a usability perspective, we expect most companies to register IDNs for China and Russia (and elsewhere) regardless of any such regulations. But the regulations will be a wake-up call to those companies that have overlooked IDNs.

4. The .asia Domain Will Not Equal the Success of .eu
In one year, the .eu domain surpassed 2.5 million registrations. It would stand to reason that the forthcoming .asia domain, which represents a far larger population, would be even more popular.

I’m not so sure. I believe that .asia will be fortunate if it reaches 1 million registrations in its first year, and it may not exceed half a million. The reason for this is two-fold:

• No geographic boundary. While .eu refers to a group of clearly defined countries, what countries does .asia refer to exactly? I’m not sure, and neither is anyone I’ve asked.
• IDNs are better. China, Korea, Vietnam and others are going to embrace domains in their native language rather than the .asia domain.

The sunrise period for .asia began in November, and the DotAsia registry reports 15,000 applications, the majority of which have come from US corporations. This is hardly an overwhelming response and a sign that 2008 will be an underwhelming year for registrations.

5. Splash Global Gateways Become Ubiquitous
Early this year, during the course of research for the 2007 Web Globalization Report Card, I found that approximately 30% of the 200 Web sites reviewed made use of a splash (or landing page) global gateway, such as the one shown here:

That figure was a 20% increase from the year before and a sign of a trend that we do not see slowing. By the end of 2008, nearly half of all large multinationals will make use of splash global gateways.

6. Geolocation Gains Fans (and Enemies)
Geolocation is a “behind the scenes” way of guessing a Web user’s location by analyzing his or her IP address. It can be quite effective, and Google has used it for years. Amazon and Expedia also use it selectively, and more companies will follow suit next year.

However, I think we will also begin to see news reports of geolocation being used to keep people out of Web sites. For example, Amazon may offer a special discount on a book in one country and not the other, and it does not want users in the non-discounted country to know better. Using geolocation, users could be barred from seeing these discounts or products altogether, without being the wiser.

Geolocation could be used to create geographically gated communities on the Internet, something that goes against the spirit of the Internet but is also difficult to stop.

7. Multilingual Corporate Blogs Go Mainstream
While lawyers in companies around the globe fret over the legal implications of supporting employee blogs, more and more companies are taking the plunge, from Dell to Sun to Google. From a budgetary perspective, blogs offer the ideal way to bypass the cost-per-word limitation of translation while offering plenty of local content. Naturally, companies need good writers locally who can contribute relevant content, but these writers do exist, and forward-looking companies will put them to good use.

8. Wal-Mart Launches a Spanish Site for the US
While retailers like Lowe’s and Staples have launched Spanish-language Web sites for the US market, Wal-Mart has remained on the sidelines. This will change in 2008.

I witnessed a sign that Wal-Mart is headed in this direction during the week of Thanksgiving.

Wal-Mart ran a Web-based promotion that was bilingual, as shown here:

If you were to click through on any of these product links, you would be taken to English-language text. But I think this will change, probably by next Thanksgiving.

Looking Beyond 2008

9. Baidu and Yandex Enter the US to Challenge Google
If one the best forms of defense is a strong offense, I expect Chinese search engine leader Baidu and Russian search engine leader Yandex to attack Google on its home turf.

Yandex, shown here, continues to lead in Russia despite Google’s best efforts. And the success of both Yandex and Baidu hint that the search engine wars globally have only just begun.

10a. Google Becomes Your Company’s Internal Translator
Google Apps is a Web-based platform that businesses small and large rely on to support email and collaboration. At some point in the future, Google will provide business members with integrated access to Google Translate.

Google Translate will allow executives to have foreign-language emails translated in real-time into their native language. Web browsing can also be translated in real time for executives who want to learn more about foreign competition. All of this will be powered by Google’s in-house statistical machine translation (SMT) engine and it will be tailored to the company’s industry terminology.

The quality of this translation will by no means be perfect. But as Google’s engine gets to understand your business and as its global memory database grows, the quality of translations will improve. Google will allow companies to upload their own translation memories to further improve Google’s SMT engine.

10b. Google Becomes Your Company’s External Translator
Eventually, companies will become so comfortable with Google’s translation abilities that it will allow Google to be the company’s “front end” for specific types of Web content.

For example, a company may offer a public blog in English and will allow Google’s SMT engine to translate it for the world. Since this is content that the company may not have ever paid to have manually translated, it’s a nice proposition for both the company and consumers.

Naturally, there are a lot of “ifs” involved. Companies must upload their translation memories to provide the level of quality required, and the public must be satisfied with less-than-perfect translation quality.

But the ramifications of Google acting as a “multilingual interface” is significant. It could very well mean that we’ll see companies actually decrease their pure translation spending in the years ahead. But that does not mean they won’t be spending money on Web globalization. Their spending will probably increase, but it will be focused on content creators, editors, user advocates, and community managers.

What does this mean to vendors? It means that the time is now to begin thinking about how your company will thrive in a world where translation is not your core source of revenue.

What’s the reason for this sudden transformation of the industry?

I believe the changes are due to the simple fact that the translation agencies are no longer leading the industry. The technologists have taken over, and they have a different vision for the future.

By technologists, I’m referring to software vendors, such as Idiom and Language Weaver and Clay Tablet. I’m also referring to the buyers of translation services, buyers who have seen how technology can make their lives easier and want to see their vendors make full use of this technology — from hosted project management software to machine translation.

While linguists focus on the “art” of translation, technologists focus on the “science” of translation. And that’s why we’re seeing the rebirth of machine translation as statistical machine translation (SMT). SMT brings the power of brute force computing to translation, to a degree that the pioneers of machine translation could have only imagined forty years ago.

SMT is not by itself going to disrupt the translation industry. But SMT, along with early adopter clients (by way of the Translation Automation Users Society), and the efforts of Google, are likely to change this industry in ways we can’t fully grasp right now.

The Translation Automation Users Society (TAUS) conducted a brief survey recently of its member companies and interested observers. About 55% of the 200+ respondents were translation vendors, while 30% were buyers of translation services.

TAUS asked if the “per word” pricing model used by the industry was outdated, and 65% of respondents agreed that it was. However, there was no agreement as to what model should replace per-word pricing. Respondents were evenly split between per-word pricing, per-hour pricing, and capacity (annual service agreement) pricing.

What this says to me is that we are standing at an exciting point in the industry — where there is a clear need for a new direction but no clear direction in which to head. In other words, the industry is searching for leaders, which is why the technologists have had so much sway lately.

The TAUS survey also found that 68% of respondents were in favor of the sharing of translation memory data. Not surprisingly, TAUS is going to make the sharing of memories a priority in 2008, and technology will play a key role.

The most definitive finding from the survey was that 75% of respondents felt that translation agencies should take the lead in investing in translation automation. I have seen recent signs of agencies doing just that — but only after companies such as Idiom and Language Weaver paved the way.

I do not believe it will be agencies that take the lead in translation automation.

I think it will be Google that will do more than any other company to promote the next generation of translation.

Many tech pundits say Google is in the process of “becoming the Internet” by not only powering search but by hosting content and applications and facilitating financial transactions. Right now, the search engine is just a means to the end — your company’s Web site. But what if Google became both the means and the end?

That is, what if Google became the multilingual interface to your company’s Web site? It’s not going to happen tomorrow or next year or possibly even this decade. But I think it will happen, and when it does happen, the translation industry as we know it will be changed forever.