One of the emerging trends in the online world is to have a translation service. Google Translate is probably the best well known with ad-ons and blog widgets to help people translate web pages, documents and the likes. However, the problem is that it’s often a little too ‘literal’ meaning some sentences don’t make sense when translated. They get ‘lost in translation’, if you will.
My Gengo allow users to upload a document, have it translated by a professional and then returned to them at a very low rate (normally 70% lower than freelance translators charge on sites like Elance). I think this is a great idea. A few times I have needed letters and documents translated for my business and have had to spend quite a lot of money to ensure they’re translated properly – especially when I’m sending them to a client or a potential one.
The site offers translation services between languages like English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Italian and Russian. They recently received investment from tech entrepreneur Dave McClure so it looks like this start-up might just be a success in the near future.
Jibbigo has just release their bilingual translation app for the iPhone and iPod touch with the capability of translating a user’s speech directly into another spoken phrase.
Users record one sentence of English or Spanish at a time, which the app then translates into a synthesized counterpart. A vocabulary of 40,000 words is included, generally skewed towards travelers and doctors.
Unusual in the software is the requirement of an iPhone 3GS for full functionality. Two-way translation is supported, but only on the 3GS. Older iPhones and the second-gen Touch are limited to unidirectional translation, and also said to operate more slowly. The app costs $25, and requires iPhone 3.0 firmware.
Google has announced a lot of new additions to its translation offering. Firstly they have announced a new website translator gadget which is available in 51 languages. Now, when people visit your page, if their language (as determined by their browser settings) is different than the language of your page, they’ll be prompted to automatically translate the page into their own language. If the visitor’s language is the same as the language of your page, no translation banner will appear.
Additionally, Google has announced that they have improved their Toolbar, which now also includes in-page translation.
One of the emerging trends in the online world is to have a translation service. Google Translate is probably the best well known with ad-ons and blog widgets to help people translate web pages, documents and the likes. However, the problem is that it’s often a little too ‘literal’ meaning some sentences don’t make sense when translated. They get ‘lost in translation’, if you will.
