Lack of Translated Documents a Problem f...

Generally speaking, it’s never a good idea to sign something you can’t read. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for international travelers to be asked to do just that, and it’s something that can definitely come back and haunt you later. For example, the Houston Chronicle interviewed...

British Colombian Mounties Remove Google...

The debate over machine-produced versus human translation took the British Colombian division of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police by surprise, according to this article in the Vancouver Sun. The BC Mounties were providing French translations of their press releases via Google Translate. However, after...

Crowd-Sourced Translation Goes Awry For ...

Facebook’s crowd-sourced translation app has helped the company translate Facebook into over 100 different languages quickly and cheaply. However, the company (and many of its users) just discovered one of the downsides of crowd-sourcing- vulnerability to online pranksters. The problem was discovered...

New Computer Program Could Be the Key to...

Translating written fragments of long-forgotten languages is an extremely difficult, often frustrating task. It requires vast amounts of linguistic knowledge, skill at pattern recognition, and good intuition to make the pieces fall into place. Even with the help of the Rosetta Stone, it still took over...

Real-Time Mobile Translation To Be Avail...

PCWorld has an interesting article posted on the possibility of instant voice translation via your cell phone. At the Mobile Voice Conference last week in San Francisco, two companies displayed products that can turn your cell phone into an instant translator, although neither is available for consumers...

Machine Translation Versus Human Transla...

Which is better, machine-powered translation or human-powered translation? In this weekend’s New York Times, David Bellos, the director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication at Princeton University, weighs in. Bellos points out that  both machines and humans make mistakes...

Google New Translation App Brings Speech...

Google’s new translation app aims to turn mobile phones that run on the Android operating system into universal translators. The app is capable of translating text written in one language into speech in another, and vice versa. So, for example, if you were in a foreign country and needed to find...

One Step Closer To Native Web Addresses...

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, aka ICANN, is one step closer to allowing the first Internet addresses written completely in non-Latin characters. Previously, in October, ICANN had voted to allow non-Latin web addresses. On January 21st, they approved the first four non-Latin...

Google and IBM Tackle Ambitious Translat...

You may not realise it, but the internet sites you see when you surf the web are limited by the language you are surfing in. So, there’s always a part of the internet that you are shut out of. Possibly, according to this article on CNN.com, not for long, both IBM and Google are currently working...

Microblogging Service Plurk Attracts Asi...

When it comes to microblogging, Twitter is king. However, according to this article on PC World, its sovereignty is being threatened in several Asian countries by upstart microblogging service Plurk, which offers the support for local languages and alphabets that Twitter largely lacks. Right now, Plurk...