SDL Users Group

This week, Google’s philanthropic arm (Google.org) announced an initiative called Health Speaks, which seeks to make health-related information available to individuals throughout the world, regardless of language. Starting with Arabic, Hindi, and Swahili, the project will use community, crowdsourced, and collaborative translation to address an important but often-overlooked disparity – access to health information.

Here’s how the project works:

• Volunteers will translate health articles. For its pilot project, Google has elected to have volunteers translate Wikipedia articles covering a variety of health care topics. Individuals will not be paid for their volunteer translation work, and must use Google Translator Toolkit.

• Google will donate to health care non-profits. For each word translated from English during the first 60 days of the project, Google will donate US$0.03 to one of three non-profit organizations – the Children’s Cancer Hospital Egypt, the Public Health Foundation of India, and the African Medical and Research Foundation, up to a total of US$150,000.

• Language barriers will be (partially) addressed. The initial project is only a pilot, but Google has made it clear that the long-term goal is to reduce the barrier to knowledge-based health care in nations with limited access to health information.

As longtime observers and occasional practitioners of community translation initiatives, we have some suggestions for the project:

• Start recruiting for other languages now. Because the project is initially aimed at just three languages, a volunteer can only sign up for Arabic, Hindi, and Swahili.  However, it would be a good idea to use the same sign-up form to capture volunteer information for other languages too, as Twitter did when it first started with community translation. In fact, it’s highly likely that many of the same individuals signing up to volunteer for the three pilot languages would be glad to volunteer for other languages too.  Simply adding the question, “What other languages do you speak?” would enable Google to build a larger base of volunteers to extend its language reach for future projects.

• Target volunteers in a diverse array of nations. We noticed that the registration form asks volunteers to name their country of residence, but nations with some of the largest populations of qualified translators are not listed. For example, individuals living in the United Kingdom and the United States could be tremendous recruitment sources for the project. Other countries that are home to large numbers of immigrant and refugee populations may also have volunteers with plenty of expertise to assist. The project is more likely to catch on if it’s marketed globally from the start.

• Encourage translators to participate too. The sign-up form does not include “translator” or “interpreter” as choices for professions.  While this might have been a strategic decision by Google to prevent backlash from the translation industry experienced by companies such as LinkedIn, the goals of this program clearly benefit society at large. It’s also something that we believe a lot of freelance translators and interpreters will support, especially those working in the healthcare community, since they understand the significance of language-related health information disparities.

• Make the information available via audio. Once translations are finished, it would be ideal to provide the information in audio format, or even video. While this is probably a few steps ahead of the pilot project’s objectives, we can’t emphasize enough that text alone is inadequate. Spoken language is accessible to much larger segments of the world’s population, especially those with low levels of health literacy. And, multimedia output will take on more importance than ever – especially in developing nations – as more people access information using mobile devices.

We’ve written before about efforts by international and domestic organizations –such as the World Health Organization and the Refugee Health Information Network — to make health-related information available in multiple languages. This is of critical importance – especially in disaster response settings. What these organizations have traditionally lacked were the multilingual human networks to make large-scale efforts possible.

So, the fact that Google is committing resources to making health care information available in multiple languages is not just worth noting – it’s of tremendous importance. If Google can build a community of individuals willing to translate health care information into many languages, it could serve to bridge one of the most important gaps in access to information affecting people’s lives today.

Language technology supplier MultiCorpora today announced that it has acquired Beetext, another developer of translation management systems (TMS). The deal underscores the importance of offering a complete solution for companies managing large-scale projects.

MultiCorpora CEO Pierre Blais pre-briefed us on the acquisition earlier this week. Because both companies are family-owned and privately funded, Blais wouldn’t disclose the dollar amount of the deal but did say that MultiCorpora was paying for Beetext with cash on hand and would not need to borrow any money. The two firms will merge operations and staff, but the Beetext office in Montreal will remain open. Beetext president Benoit Desjardins will take a customer-facing strategy and support role at MultiCorpora. Blais said that MultiCorpora intends to integrate the two company’s products, its own MultiTrans and Beetext’s Flow MMX, in the next couple of months. He also said that MultiCorpora will also sell both solutions separately for buyers that would like to integrate either solution with commercial off-the-shelf or homegrown solutions.

Why did these two language technology suppliers come together? Blais said that MultiCorpora felt that it needed core workflow and project management components to MultiTrans so that it could participate in some deals. Previously, it had partnered with Plunet, but without MultiCorpora controlling all the technology, it could not offer prospects the level of language and project management integration that they were seeking. Many corporate buyers and language service providers evaluating TMS solutions don’t want to have to become integrators of disparately sourced technologies to get the full assemblage of language, project control, connectivity, business data, and system oversight they need to run their operations.

All told, the combined products add up to a strong TMS contender. In our assessment of translation management products, we found that MultiCorpora scored well with its language support, but fell down on project, financial, and vendor management. Conversely, Beetext has done very well on the business management axes, but was missing the language component. The performance of both firms on these language and business issues hearkens back to their original design centers, with each focusing on a different part of the TMS puzzle. Putting these two products under the same roof has the potential to create a much stronger product, without any of the “finger-pointing” problems associated with the arm’s length couplings so prevalent in the industry.

Who will buy this conjoined product? Translation companies certainly will take a look. Our report on “Tech-Savvy Language Service Providers” (Aug10) demonstrates that most translation suppliers seek a more unified platform on which to operate. On the end-buyer side, MultiCorpora will certainly push the technology into its traditional government, non-government organization, and business buyers, especially those with in-house translation departments but also the pure outsourcers. Blais specifically flagged the SDL (né Idiom) WorldServer community — he said that current WorldServer users want MultiTrans’ advanced leveraging technology (that is, sub-sentential segments, as discussed in “Beyond Global Websites,” Mar05), while other users simply want a replacement. It’s telling that 2-1/2 years after Idiom’s acquisition by SDL that the market still seeks an independent TMS solution.

MultiCorpora faces the classic challenges in bringing two software vendors’ code bases together. Besides the obvious issues of unifying interfaces, application programming interfaces, support and training, and vision, the newly expanded MultiCorpora will have to pump up its marketing and sales efforts to get a hearing in a marketplace against TMS contenders such as Across, SDL, STAR, and TransPerfect. However, the merger of products with clear strengths in their respective sectors bodes well for MultiCorpora’s offering.

Language services help the world go ’round. We’ve written before about how interpreters and translators help thwart public health outbreaks, end bomb scares, communicate with populations affected by oil spills and earthquakes, enable fans to enjoy the World Cup, and assist diplomats with international relations snafus. We thought we’d seen it all, until some bright and shiny objects — stolen diamonds — caught our attention.

No, these aren’t the alleged blood diamonds that recently “inconvenienced” Naomi Campbell, but rather, the 887.24 carat gems that were stolen from a recent jewelry show in India. What’s language got to do with it?

Quite a lot. Apparently, four of the individuals who have been detained in connection with the heist speak Spanish. Since Spanish<>Marathi interpreters cannot exactly be found on every street corner in Mumbai, investigators are using a process known as relay interpretation, in which one person interprets from Spanish into English, and then another interpreter renders the information from English into Marathi.

While this addresses the language barrier for purposes of taking the statements from the alleged diamond thieves, more language services will inevitably be needed as the case proceeds forward and justice is sought for all, including the rightful owners of the diamonds, Israeli firm Dalumi Group. Will the language pairs evolve to include Hebrew<>Marathi?

While diamond heists are often the themes of  Bollywood and Hollywood films, the very real and growing demand for less common language combinations only stands to increase as globalization continues. In today’s world, all people — including criminals — are more connected than ever before, making language services an essential component of battling international crime.