I’ve seen the light and I now can share with your travel company how to crack the nut of international expansion in as little as 30 days.
I should be in line for some big consultancy fees for this knowledge I am about to impart.
So, Bing Travel, are you concerned with how to expand into Europe?
And, Fly.com, does a launch in Germany whet your appetite?
And, UpTake, what about you? Do you want to streamline a launch into China? There are lots of people in that country and undoubtedly a bunch of them would be interested in accessing some inspirational travel-planning ideas.
The simple answer to all of your needs is Translations.com, which specializes in website localization and translation services.
Matt Hauser, director of technology sales for Translations.com, was one of almost three dozen entrepreneurs given 12 minutes each at PhoCusWright’s Travel Innovation Summit in Orlando today to pitch their new products as the next big thing.
Translations.com undoubtedly has an ample track record and does some good stuff, but Hauser made it all seem a tad too easy.
Hauser says Translations.com’s GlobalLink OneLink product can turn your English-language website into a foreign language website for another market in as little as 30 days, with no software to install and no technical integration necessary.
OneLink can host the servers or clients can do so themselves, and the whole project can be outsourced, he adds.
Somehow, I think relaunching your website in a foreign country is a whole lot more complicated than that, and actually I’m sure Hauser would agree.
However, there was a bit of some over-selling in his pitch, which often can be the case when companies with new solutions are looking to get some traction.
For example, if UpTake were to expand into China, I think the company would have to buy a few new PCs in addition to getting its home page translated.
And, Fly.com might have to hire a few new sales reps — or borrow them from parent company Travelzoo — in Germany if it were to attempt to tackle that market.
When I hear these kinds of pitches, where tasks seem overly easy, all I can say is, “I’m from Missouri.”
For people who don’t speak American, “I’m from Missouri” basically means you’ll have to show me to prove it.
I wonder how Translations.com translates that expression into Japanese.
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[Full disclosure: I am a PhoCusWright contractor.]
It’s interesting but when you get free tools like Google’s translator and then you can sub-edit that basic translation yourself, why would you bother paying for it?
Even with my minimal ability to speak French and Japanese, it’s been clear that Google Translations and babelfish.yahoo.com are spotty at best, especially with slang.
I had a chance to sit down with some of the Translations team to see how their software would accomplish a task, such as taking a Twitter feed and then doing a real-time translation of that feed into Spanish, German, etc.
They didn’t believe their approach would be up to that particular task, suggesting that the overall approach is based more on their ability to crowdsource language experts than the ability of software to make complete translations.
Hi Tamara: Good point about Google’s translator, but I doubt a major company can just throw their extensive website content into Google translator and, presto, launch in a foreign country.
I think it’s way more complex than that….which was my point about Translation.com, as well. The company made it appear just too easy.
Brian: I’m not down with the crowdsource lingo. What do you mean by crowdsourcing language experts? How does that relate to Translation.com’s work?
Ya, and think of all the offensive, outrageous things that would sue in a new, foreign market if Translations.com isn’t up to the local idioms, dialects etc.
Dennis, “crowdsourcing” refers to a kind of process automation that deals with people rather than things. In Translations.com case, from what I was able to gather from my conversation with them, it refers to the ability to break down a mammoth website into individual pages and then delegate each piece to a different translator, as opposed to a single team.
A typical website might go through several passes: the initial translation, then successive iterations with smaller and smaller groups, to ensure that the entire site speaks with the same “voice”.
@replies are another form of crowdsourcing. Forrester had an example of this on their blog.
http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2009/11/google-search-vs-twitter-search-vs-your-own-personal-groundswell.html
I was actually going to demo our version of this at my demo on Tuesday – and had asked a number of TIS attendees to participate – but I spent a good part of Monday afternoon determining that the signal strength was not reliable enough. (In hindsight, I should have stuck with the original plan. But que sera, sera.)
Dennis – you are absolutely right. I think a company would be crazy to rely on any automated translation tool to translate their site. But therefore, if you are going to start with a tool and then use a professional (editor or sub editor) to perfect it, then why not use a free tool in the first instance? It seems crazy to pay for something unless it is that much better.
You’ve probably already read today’s NYTimes article on IBM’s efforts in machine language translation …
http://go.twavl.com/iepnc
…but I’d be remiss in pointing out that Facebook’s own international efforts have been fueled by crowdsourcing, and in fact Facebook is seeking to patent the process — something the fine people at Translations.com need to be aware of:
http://go.twavl.com/ecwbb
Brian: Thanks for the links about IBM’s and Facebook’s crowdsourcing efforts in translations. A company’s workforce/knowledge base is a material asset. Funny that a bunch of people can do a lot of stuff that a mainframe can never do. Oh, the legacy technology.
Tamara: I would love to see a competive features chart…gauging Translations.com and Google Translations. Would be interesting.