For the last year, Microsoft has been trying to play catchup with Google in the world of free online translation. For the most part, Google Translate has enjoyed a commanding lead over Microsoft’s Bing Translator in almost every aspect including translation quality, number of languages supported and software support. Microsoft enjoyed one small victory when it was first to announce support of free online Haitian Creole translation on January 31, 2010. But not to be outdone, Google came out with their own Haitian Creole tool a few days later.
Now, however, it appears that Microsoft has come up with a winning solution for website translation which may give it some primacy over Google in the translation industry. Microsoft’s new website translation widget and the collaboration feature it incorporates is an intelligent and visionary concept which will be suitable for many website owners: it provides each website owner with a custom translation memory (TM) that contains human translation which was approved by the owner. The TM is totally private and is not shared with any other websites.
Microsoft has come up with a very ambitious concept. The big question is: will it work? Keep reading to get a first look at the collaboration feature and for some exclusive new information about Microsoft’s website translation widget from Chris Wendt, Program Manager for MT at Microsoft. continue reading…
