Global by Design

Google Translate is the first place I turn for free machine translation (MT), mostly because it supports the greatest number of language pairs. I use Microsoft Translator as well, but usually only when I want to compare engines. I haven’t used Babel Fish in years. But which engine offers the highest quality translations? I’m assuming [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve been writing this blog since 2002. 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. [...]

[Read more →]

With a few hours to spare, here are the most popular blog posts of 2009, based on number of visitors: The rise of “international” English — otherwise known as American English Of Kosovo and .ks Bing Beats Google in Insta-translation Facebook: From 1 to 100 languages in two years Is this the next language icon? [...]

[Read more →]

I’m working on the Web Globalization Report Card, and this, plus my fascination with Facebook, inspired me to check out my Forgetting English page in several different languages. 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 [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve long maintained that translation agencies need to get creative if they are to succeed in the age of machine translation. 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 [...]

[Read more →]