GTS Blog

While reading Google’s website today on this page, I was amazed to read that Google plans to start charging for using its Translator Toolkit. Google states: “Google Translator Toolkit is free, but in the future, we plan to charge users whose translations exceed high-volume thresholds.”

This is really am amazing piece of news, since Google gives away all of its services for free. Is this a trend which Google will follow with other services? And why start charging for translation? If anyone has an answer to this I would appreciate hearing it.

In a discussion I initiated on Linkedin’s Automated Language Translation Group back in July 2009, I raised the status of Google’s MT initiative, where they were headed with it and what it means to the commercial MT (machine translation) vendors. Specifically, why should people pay for translation services when Google offers them for free? I guess that this announcement puts Google in the category of commercial MT vendors after all. 

This announcement should come as good news to the vendors whose main business is MT, as they should be able to compete with a giant company that “also sells MT.” The announcement should be treated with caution by customers: what looks great today may not be that great tomorrow.

I would like to congratulate Jaap van der Meer of TAUS who predicted that Google will start charging for MT in his article published in June.  Jaap, you are true visionary – chapeau.

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On August 17, 2009 Internet translation company WorldLingo announced that it was integrating the Language Weaver SMT (Statistical Machine Translation) system into their website, providing free and paid translation solutions using Language Weaver machine translation software. We wrote about this on our blog (see post here) and speculated that WorldLingo needed some new horses after it lost about 60% of its Internet traffic. 

If some of you are wondering what the deal has done for WorldLingo, the answer is: plenty. Since the deal, Internet media metrix companies Alexa and Compete.com show a dramatic increase in Internet traffic that began at the time WorldLingo started offering new languages using Language Weaver software. See the charts below; both show the same trend. The obvious conclusion is that people are looking on the Internet for free translation services and that more languages translates into more visitors. Language Weaver, with their wide selection of languages, gave WorldLingo what they needed to start getting back into shape. Traffic on WorldLingo is still way off the numbers they had a few years ago, but the trend should be encouraging to them.

WorldLingo ranking on Alexa

WorldLingo ranking on Compete.com

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Now it is easier than ever to get translations quickly without having to navigate through multiple web pages. Just go to  www.bing.com and type ‘translate + translation_phrase’ or ‘translation +   translation_phrase.’ The phrase is translated into several languages immediately as shown below:

Bing Direct Translation

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The following is a ranking of the top 10 translation websites in terms of Internet traffic. The data was collected from ranking tools which are accepted in the Internet industry. The ranking only includes websites that are dedicated specifically to translation and does not include websites which provide translation related services as a sideline (i.e., Google, Babylon, Yahoo, Bing).   

1. ProZ.com. An online community and portal for translators and translation companies. Users can post translation jobs to reach translation pros. 
2. Worldlingo. Provides free and paid translation services for text translation, website translation, email translation and more.
3. Translators Cafe. A directory of translators and translation companies.
4. Applied Language Solutions. Provides free and paid text translation, website translation and more. 
5. Translation Guide. Directory of translators, free translation tools and translation software.
6. Lingo24.Provides free and paid translation services.
7. Translated.net. Provides free and paid translation services.
8. ATS Translations. A company that provides English, French, German and Hungarian translation services.
9. Free Lance Translators Union. Cooperative of translators in Lithuania.
10. ForeignWord. Free online translation and links to online dictionaries, translation downloads and specialized glossaries.

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Microsoft recently made their language portal, previously only for internal use at Microsoft, available online for public use. Click here to see it.

The language portal allows you to search Microsoft localization glossaries and terminology database in over 70 languages, download style guides, provide feedback on terminology used in Microsoft products and get links to other additional Microsoft language resources. You can also participate in terminology forms and collaborate with language professionals.

Terminology search in MS Language portal

The term search function is easy to use, you just enter a term and select a language. Response time is slow: the query for translation of window into German took more than 10 seconds. But the wait is worthwhile. The results window displays dictionary definitions for all related terms. It provides the translation individually for each of the the Microsoft products (e.g. .NET, MS Excel). The window also provides advanced search options, and allows you to search for terminology translations per Microsoft product and for translations from ‘any’ to ‘any’ language.

The Style Guide download function proved to be buggy but I managed a workaround. It is easy to download each of the more than 70 Style Guides per language, but opening them can be problematic due to security issues (which is weird since MS Windows XP does not allow you to open a CHM file that MS itself created). The workarounds mentioned on the Language portal did not work, but I solved the problem by opening the CHM file using Internet Explorer and THEN using the workaround suggested by MS.

Microsoft Localization Style Guides per Language

The style guides are provided in MS HTML Help (CHM) format. The information is provided clearly and in abundance.

The release of the Language portal is great news to translators and localization professionals/companies. The wealth of resources here is incredible.

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