GTS Blog

The area of Internet translation is large and is growing. As more people are searching for translation services on the web, translation companies are putting more effort into creating engaging and interactive websites. In the last few years, a number of new translation companies have emerged that only sell via the Internet. Some of these companies provide the entire order cycle from quote to delivery online, with no human interaction of any kind.

Alexa, a subsidiary of Amazon, is probably the most influential company in the field of general website information, Internet traffic statistics, analytics and metrics. One of the more useful features of the Alexa website is Top Sites, where you can rank websites per topic, industry, etc. I obtained a ranking on Alexa today for translation services company websites (click here to see the Alexa ranking). Here is the top 10 list:

1. Proz.com
2. Translated.net
3. Worldlingo
4. TranslatorsCafe.com
5. SDL International
6. Translation Guide
7. Translation Services USA
8. Lingo24
9. Translatorsbase
10. Applied Language Solutions

In reviewing this list, I made a few observations that I wanted to share with you:

• Four of the website listed by Alexa (Proz, Translators Cafe, Translation Guide and Translators Base) are not translation companies. They are websites that provide language- and translation-related resources.
• Three of the websites are steadily dropping in the Alexa rankings: Applied Language, Worldlingo and Lingo 24. Applied Language used to be the number 2 ranked translation company on the web up to a few years ago, but has strengthened its position as a full-service LSP and is no longer as aggressive in promoting their website. Wordlingo owned the Internet translation business for years but has steadily been losing ground with the emergence of free services and translation widgets from Google, Microsoft and others. Worldingo also tried some risky SEO tactics that may have cost them a lot of traffic (I wrote a blog post about it earlier this year).
• Four of the websites (Applied Language, SDL, Worldlingo and Translation Services USA) employ some form of free machine translation. That factors high in drawing traffic to their website as people are always looking for free translation services.
• All of the translation company websites on this list use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to advance their ranking in the search engines. Several of the companies offer free translation widgets that link back to their website in order to boost their ranking. Several of the websites use some form of online affiliate marketing.
• So far, none of the online translation companies like MyGengo and Onehourtranslation have cracked the top 10 list. That may change in the future and if I detect any significant trends I will let you know.

Related articles

• Translation Services USA’s Crowdsourcing Translator, Ackuna.com, Raises the Bar for More Accurate Machine Translations (prweb.com)
• Crowdsourced website translation service Easyling wins How To Web Startup Challenge (thenextweb.com)
• Is Alexa Web Analytics Flawed & Inaccurate ? (techpluto.com)

The translation startup space is expanding. Last month, Japanese translation company MyGengo announced that it had raised an additional $5.25 Million in funding to develop their online translation platform. This brings the total capital raised by MyGengo to $7 Million. No small amount. Website translation company Smartling recently raised an additional $10 Million. With war chests that large, these companies are likely to challenge the localization industry in many ways.

It now appears that MyGengo may be feeling the heat from another Asian translation startup called OneSky. And while the implementation each company offers may differ somewhat, these companies share a common vision: to enable software companies to reach new markets-especially in Asian countries-by offering cost-competitive software localization services bundled in online API tools that integrate with the client’s development process.

Based in Hong Kong, Onesky is being advised (and possibly funded) by Greg Sung, founder of aNobii, and Garry Tan, Venture Partner of Y-Combinator and Co-founder of Posterous.

OneSky Translation Quote Interface

OneSky’s website provides online quotes for professional translation on their Home page. This can be done either by pasting in text or by uploading software string files. The quotes are provided by translation companies that partner with OneSky. In providing this service, OneSky functions similarly to Cloudwords: another startup I wrote about last September.

For software companies interested in ongoing localization or crowdsourcing, OpenSky offers a localization management system with several pricing tiers and integration options: OneSky offers an API which connects the software app to OneSky’s management server. The strings are translated on OneSky’s server and then populated into the software app. Since this process is dynamic, new or modified strings in the source code are detected and automatically sent to the OneSky platform. All translation done on the OneSky platform are sent to the software application and automatically updated. The OneSky platform also offers crowdsourcing options which enable the users of the software to vote on translations; the voting mechanism can be setup to control the localization process and update translations based on user feedback.

OneSky offers a wide range of libraries for the various development environments, web and mobile platforms. The most popular ones are covered: this includes the iPhone and Android mobile platforms. The OneSky blog brings several case studies and testimonials from software companies that have used OneSky’s platform for localization management and crowdsourcing. These success stories indicate that OneSky is a company we may hear of more in the future.

Related articles

• OneSky brings crowdsourced translations to sites and apps (thenextweb.com)
• myGengo lands $5.25M for online translation that really works (gigaom.com)
• Language Translation Startup myGengo Raises $5.25 Million From Atomico (businessinsider.com)
• 50 New APIs: PayPay Invoicing, CloudMine and New York City’s API (programmableweb.com)
• 5 ways to go global in China (gigaom.com)

I just noticed a new feature on Google Translate: it remembers the last three languages you selected and creates tabs to allow quick selection of those languages. This new feature saves time when you need translation into multiple languages-it’s quicker to click a tab then to select a language from the pull-down menu. Tabs can be selected separately for the source (From) and target (To) languages.

This feature is cool. Google got a lot of heat when it pulled its free API service but this new feature proves that Google is not abandoning R&D on Google Translate and is continuing to add new features that enhance the user experience.

If you’ve been providing translations for a while, you’ve likely come across the challenge of small translations – delivering the translation is not a problem, but your customer has to pay a minimum charge of 50 to 80 USD. A 10 word translation can end up costing several Dollars a word!

Keeping that idea in mind, a company in the UK has created a new translation platform designed to simplify the translation process of small translation projects. With SOS Translator Chat – subject matter translation experts can be instantly brought into an online chat with just a click of the mouse. You can choose the translator(s) based on reviews, price, number of words translated, linguist degree obtained or number of years of experience. After a chat, clients always get a copy of the entire conversation sent to their email. And there is no minimum fee!

How can your translation agency benefit from SOS Translator Chat Services? Just request a live chat with a real linguistic specialist in any language combination and you have your small translations in as little as a couple of minutes. That is why SOS Translator Chat has been created! Translators and prices are your choice. Every translator will have his/her own prices set and his/her own start rate. That’s why you can easily see the translator’s qualifications, price and experience before starting the chat.

With 1500 registered translators, SOS Translator Chat now offers efficient live chat translations. Please call +44-203-432-8091 or visit www.sostranslatorchat.com for more information.

Disclaimer: I have never used this site and cannot say whether the service is valuable or not. If anyone has any experience with this company or service, please leave a comment so we can read about your experience.

It gives me great pleasure to announce a new product: the GTS Website Translator. This product allows you to:

• Translate web pages for free using machine translation
• Post-edit the translation online
• Get online quotes for professional translation

The current product supports translation from English to French, Italian, German and Spanish (FIGS). The machine translation is done on our own translation server (and does not go through an API such as Google or Microsoft).

The GTS Translation Editor

Post editing the initial translation is done online using our translation editor. The original page and the translated page are displayed side-by-side. Clicking on any text displays a popup window for editing. Using the translation editor you can edit the menu texts, the page title, meta tags, page description and the embedded texts such as alt-tags and tool tips.

Online Quotes

Getting  online quotes is easy and available 24/7. Payment can be made using all major credit cards.

Tracking your Order

You can track your orders at any time using your own, private tracking window. Email notifications are sent as well to inform you of the order status.

If you have any questions about this product, please contact info@gts-translation for more details.