Intercultural Communication and Translation News

Google have set their sites on developing their translation software. Over the years the company has clocked onto the potential the world wide web holds especially in non-English speaking countries. The launch of many innovative translation tools has already seen it trailblazing ahead of the likes of Yahoo! and Microsoft in terms of engaging the world into using Google as the favoured search engine.

Google gave more insight some of its translation work in a presentation at the Wikimania conference in Poland recently. It is using Wiki material in a clever way. By using the articles and information up on the mammoth website it hopes to accomplish a couple of very important aims > a) to present content online in other languages in order to capture searches from non-English speaking countries and b) to further enhance the accuracy of their translation memory.

The two points in fact marry up to the sound of more money rolling into the Google accounts. A better translation memory means a more accurate translation of online content = higher numbers of people finding information via Google = positioning advertisements around this information = $$$.

So how does the translation memory (TM) work? Google’s translation technology begins with content in which the same text appears in multiple languages. The more examples of human translation it has, the better it works and the less often it has to fall back on machine translation. Wikipedia provides a diverse and growing body of subject matter that is ideal for the task. “In the last 16 months, Google has been working with the Wikimedia Foundation, students, professors, Google volunteers, paid translators, and members of the Wikipedia community to increase Wikipedia content in Arabic, Indic languages, and Swahili,” Google say. Tt has begun the work with Hindi, which despite having millions of speakers had only 21,000 Wikipedia articles in 2008 compared with 2.5 million in English.

Read more > Google Blog

The police in Portsmouth have taken an interesting approach to communicating with non-English speaking shoppers. As part of an initiative by Plymouth Against Retail Crime (Parc),  translation packs are being given to large stores, with some going to police patrol cars used around the city centre too.

The packs contain 13 cards, each carrying phrases in a foreign language and their English translation. Languages include Turkish, Spanish, Russian, Italian, French and Farsi. The cards can be used in situations where a foreigner needs help or is suspected of a crime in a store.

Although its a shame the cards are being used within the context of criminal activity it does demonstrate the understanding that simple actions such as phrases does make a difference. Wouldn’t it be nice if staff could also get translation cards with simple greetings instead though?

Read more > Translation packs