I saw an interesting post on Blogos (Multilingual Magazines blog) about a new language learning website which will help translate the web using the power of the crowd. This concept is the brainchild of CMU Professor Luis von Ahn who is the creator of reCaptcha, a company which was acquired by Google in 2009. The new startup which is called Duolingo follows a similar concept to that of reCaptcha. People want to learn new languages. So why not get them to translate web content while learning and use the translations for real work. An article in Techcrunch from a few weeks ago predicted that Google will acquire this new company within 6 months.

The idea is great. But will it be the greatest idea since sliced bread? I am not sure but here are some interesting facts to consider.

  • Unlike reCaptcha, this service does not fulfill an essential need. Language learning is cool, but most people can live without it. U.S. customers currently feel little urgency to learn foreign languages despite the increasingly global economy (this quote was taken from a Motley Fool article about the language learning company Rosetta Stone). Captchas, on the other hand, fulfill a critical need. Without Captchas, spammers and hackers would own the Internet.
  • reCaptcha asks people to perform a very menial task (reading words). Duolingo is asking people to learn a language and to translate between two languages. This will take a much more complex and broader delivery platform than reCapcha.
  • The US stock market does not believe in the language learning market (see following stock chart and the Motley Fool article). There are many free online language learning systems such as Berlitz, Disney’s Publishing Worldwide, CBS’s Pimsleur, LiveMocha and McGraw Hill.
Rosetta Stone 2Y Stock Chart

Rosetta Stone 2 Year Stock Chart

Will Google want to get into the language learning market? This would to be a new area for them. But it may be attractive to Google (or another company with an ambitious MT development program) as a source of getting large training corpuses. It’s worth keeping an eye on this company but they have a long way to go. Let’s see how the launch (scheduled to take place in a few weeks) unfolds. Let’s see how many people use this as a language learning platform.

It really is a great idea. But I had another thought: instead of teaching people new languages through translation of text, let’s train people as translators. There is a shortage of translators for low-cost website translation. Getting new people into the industry as qualified translators while translating a whole bunch of content would really be killing two birds with one Rosetta Stone.

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