Translating and Transcoding the Blogosphere

I have arrived safely, but groggy in Paris where it's now late morning and rainy. In leading up to my visit here, I have started reading some French blogs in my RSS reader, such as Marketing Alternatif - a great resource on street marketing.

As noted here before, the blogosphere is a truly global medium. Only 25 percent of the content bloggers pump out each day is written in English. This means that most of us here in the US are missing 75% of the b'sphere.

The big RSS newsreaders and the blog search engines can help fill in this void by translating foreign language content on the fly much as Google does for Web results.  BL Ochman and others have noted that machine language translation is limited. That's certainly true. However, it's the best option we have right now. (Edelman's partnership with Technorati is tackling the opposite challenge. T'Rati is creating localized front-ends and morphological analysis tools for our teams in Europe and Asia.)

Feed readers need to do a better job of transcoding content too. I have been playing around with the mobile versions of the Google Reader and Bloglines. Both make it easy to read feeds on the fly but neither offers the options to format the sites they link to for a mobile device. Again, Google has mastered this for Web search. If you use Google Mobile, all of the results it links to are automatically formatted for mobile devices.

As they become more popular and the world gets flatter, RSS readers need to get smarter in how they translate and transcode content.

Comments

[Techee]

Welcome in Paris! The weather is awful, though, what a pity. Any appearnce in any public event while in Paris? Do tell.

[Webmetricsguru]

Good luck with your Paris Visit - it's Sunday, you can always stroll over to the Lourve.

Machine language translation of XML feeds - sounds like the next new thing. Does it include local slang translation? That's going to be important - more so for blogs than regular web sites as most blogs are journals and are written in a personal (and slang-like) voice. I'm assuming the same holds true of the 75% of blogs that are not in English.

Wish I could take a stroll at the Lourve or Musee D'Orsey today - Have Fun.

[Robin Good]

Good points Steve.

On todays Sharewood Picnic I have pointed to a new interesting service which you may want to give a look: it is called Nativetext and it says about itself:

"Nativetext is a free web service that translates RSS feeds from blogs and podcasts into foreign languages.

Using a new kind of distributed supercomputing, foreign language translation is performed by a network of humans around the world, not machines.

Translated content is served to a global readership through native language syndication."

Check it out at:
www.nativetext.com

[Robin Good]

I also see it has your name on it, so apologies for pointing to something you well knew all along.

[nortypig]

Natural language understanding has a lot of homeland security money going in its direction at the moment, for obvious reasons. While its definately not there yet I'd be surprised if several large inroads weren't made in the next few years... which is what we've seen with biometrics and other artificial intelligence areas of computer science research and application.

I don't underestimate a few billion dollars thrown at terrorism to find solutions.

Enjoy Paris you lucky sod... my envy goes out to you. :)

[B.L. Ochman]

Lucky you being in Paris! Be sure to see the Picasso Museum.

Nativetext is a nice idea, but it's not yet live. Its "terms" disclaimer says that "Nativetext makes absolutely no guarantees about quality or accuracy of any information on this website or generated by this service."

What good is a translation that isn't certified correct? Google, may, as you say, be the best "free" service available right now, but I wouldn't depend on it for business. Its errors are only funny if nothing important - like reputation - is at stake.

As I've noted repeatedly, an innacurate translation can be a PR landmine.

(Full disclosure, I know a lot about this topic because I am a partner in SRF Global Translations.)

[Tony]

Welcome to Paris! Though I'm a New Yorker, I spend a few months a year in Paris, and yes, the weather stinks today!
While you're here, take a walk on the Pont des Arts bridge where there's an amazing photo expo, and try to get to the brand new Musée du quai Branly, right next the the Eiffel tower. I'm in Paris if you need any tips.

[/pd]

Steve, not sure if you have heard of litefeeds.com ?? seems to be promising

[Steve Farber]

We here in the US are so English-centric--myself included, I guess. I was shocked to see how shocked I was that 3/4 of the world's blogs are in languages other than the one I'm typing (and you're reading) now. And I already thought I was having trouble keeping up!