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Google has refined its translation tool to a point that “can make the language barrier go away,” as one of the principal scientists of the company’s machine translation team said. Now handling 52 languages, Google is yet again a visionary in an area most internet/computer companies have ignored over the years.

Remember those funny Babelfish translations you’d get at the dawn of the internet age, the computer translator that would give you “They are a small potentiometer, short circuits and a beer of malzes of the tea” for “I’m a little tea pot, short and stout”? Google has made those roundabout interpretations all but extinct.

How does machine translation work? And what makes Google’s so good?

Creating a translation machine has long been seen as one of the toughest challenges in artificial intelligence. For decades, computer scientists tried using a rules-based approach — teaching the computer the linguistic rules of two languages and giving it the necessary dictionaries.

But in the mid-1990s, researchers began favoring a so-called statistical approach. They found that if they fed the computer thousands or millions of passages and their human-generated translations, it could learn to make accurate guesses about how to translate new texts.

It turns out that this technique, which requires huge amounts of data and lots of computing horsepower, is right up Google’s alley.

Let’s be clear, no computer translation program will ever be able to capture the linguistic and cultural nuances beyond  the text. Only a thinking human can interpret text that way, and as we’d always prefer, a professional one with lots of experience. Google recognizes this too, but for anyone needing a quick translation of a news article, Google translations certainly will capture the “essence” of the story.

The New York Times reports: click here.

A “cesta” (”basket,” in English) is a lending circle in which 6 to 12 individuals contribute a monthly sum of money, and the pooled funds serve as a credit line for the members involved. It’s a model that’s well known in Latin America, but cestas are only now beginning to pop up in the U.S.

An organization called the Mission Asset Fund (MAF) is helping cestas in California link to the credit market, so that the peer-to-peer groups can establish credit histories. In San Francisco, 44% of households have no credit history at all, and more than half of Latino adults don’t have bank accounts.

“This data is very discouraging,” says MAF executive director José Quiñonez. “But we decided, really our whole approach has been, to try and view the community from a positive perspective, to appreciate what they have, not what they lack, and to build on what they have.”

The cesta banking model has been called a breakthrough, and one that non-profits can replicate.  Members must act democratically to decide how much to contribute, and who has priority to withdraw their credit. Groups are usually founded among family members or circles of friends where there is a high level of trust. “The pressure to obey the agreed rules, however informal, is more social than legal.” The goal for most members is to get out of credit card debt with other lenders, and expand business operations.

To read more about cestas and how they’re growing in Latino communities around the U.S., click here.

An online article on eCommerce discusses the importance of translating your website. It’s not a simple as you might think—and definitely not as easy as sticking your text into a machine translator and hoping for the best.

First, everyone needs to understand the value of hiring a human vs. machine translator. A human translator will pick up the idioms and intricacies of the target language in a way that a machine could never do. To use one example of an idiomatic translation, “never judge a book by its cover” would be most appropriately translated to French as “l’habit na fait pas le moine” (”the clothes don’t make the monk”).

The goal, especially in the advertisement world where words sell, is a natural-sounding and never literal translation.

The eCommerce article recommends rewriting and reducing content before having it professionally translated, not only to reduce costs but to reduce idioms as well.

Let’s take a look at a descriptive example:

Like they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover. This humble looking pocket knife has every feature short of the kitchen sink, including two cutting blades, a corkscrew, a can opener, and a global positioning system.

This product description (which I realize is not necessarily an example of a well-written paragraph) includes an idiom, a metaphor, and other figures of speech that would be hard to translate. Now, we rewrite it:

This folding knife has two cutting blades, a corkscrew, a can opener, and a global positioning system.

Having removed the idiom, the metaphor, and the term “pocket” which may not make sense in other languages, we have a matter-of-fact sentence that is ready to translate.

The article’s additional pieces of advice include: hire a professional translator, check the translation for errors (which a professional translation services should provide), hire a professional writer, and consider translation memory (also something a translation service should provide).

Note: the article cites some rather pricey costs for professional translation services. You’ll probably find better prices out there among the more competitive companies.

My best advice: discuss your options and goals with the translation service you choose from the very beginning. You can figure out how to cut corners from the start without having unknown costs spring up down the line, especially if you foresee lots of changes to your eCommerce website in the future.

Read the full article and recommendations here.

We can help! Contact WLS for a free quote for website translation.

As we’ve seen in the news so much lately, the Hispanic community contributes to a large and growing portion of the online commerce. Hispanics now make up 11% of the U.S. online market.

This leads to many questions that a Practical eCommerce article addresses in easy-to-understand terms. For example, the first question you might ask is Do I need to market to the Hispanic community? If your business is specific to one area or does not fit the wants and needs of the Hispanic community “(i.e., The All Things Irish Boutique),” the answer is probably no.

But if you belong to the vast majority of U.S. retailers, it’s time to take a look at your marketing strategy from a new perspective.

Next, How do I revise my marketing strategy to involve the Hispanic community?

To make the most of your marketing, try to understand how Hispanic consumers use, think about, and understand your products, brand, and offers. Determine what should be said to address this community and start to say it in the language your site already uses, i.e., English.

Once you’ve got a new marketing foundation for the Hispanic demographic, it’s time to communicate your message in Spanish.

As an example, Best Buy famously reported last year that visitors to its Spanish language pages spent twice as much time on page as visitors to English language pages, presumably because the U.S. Spanish-speaking community was starved for product information.

When it comes to translating your site into Spanish, do not use a machine translation service alone. Instead, invest in a professional translator who can demonstrate fluency in both languages.

Read the full Practical eCommerce article here.

We can help! To find out about WLS’s Hispanic marketing consulting and Spanish website translation, click here.

Businesses are starting to see huge profit from Twitter users. Dell, for example, earned $3 million worth of internet sales from their Twitter followers, and companies like Zappos, Whole Foods, and JetBlue are also on top of the Twitter game. The social networking tool is a great way to let customers know about special offers and company news in real time.

In light of the new phenomenon, a Global Watchtower article asks an important question: how can companies communicate to their customers in foreign languages?

They discuss three methods: regular translation, crowdsourced translation, and machine translation. They also suggest repurposing material already translated for local markets into Tweet form.

You should know a few things before you start translating your Tweets. First, not all translations are created equal. Professional translation providers, for example, should provide an accurate and idiomatic reflection of the original text so that your customers get the message right away. Machine translators (or non-native speaking translators), on the other hand, are notorious for botching your business buzz. Nothing sells worse than an idea that doesn’t make sense.

Read the full post here.

We can help! Contact us to ask about our Twitter specials. WLS can translate your Tweets at bulk rate pricing, without rush charges or minimum fees.  And follow WLS on Twitter! wdapn9c2ij

An article by Arizonian Jack Dunning explains why Hispanics have been less affected by the recession than other non-Hispanic Americans. Using recent studies by Univision and the Pew Hispanics, he points to some results:

Just 45 percent of Hispanics carry credit cards compared to 71 percent for non-Hispanics. And even a lesser amount take out loans, only 34 percent versus 53 percent for non-Hispanics. They shop more frequently than non-Hispanics, take more brand prescriptions, and pay more attention to advertising.

With less credit cards and loans comes less debt. And because Hispanics are more likely to rent homes than to own (44% vs. 23%), they have been less affected by foreclosures.

All of these reasons might be why Hispanics are more optimistic about the state of the economy than non-Hispanics, and a reason why Hispanics are more willing to spend. Buying power for Hispanics is increasing at twice the rate of non-Hispanics, and it’s impossible for companies and advertisers not to take notice. Simply translating marketing materials (Hispanics are 38% more likely to buy from an advertiser than non-Hispanics [Index 131 to 95], according to Univision) will bring your business one step closer to accessing a powerful sector of the U.S. economy.

Click here to read more.

Skin color, social status and accent are all underlying prejudices that Hispanic employers may consider in Hispanic job applicants, confesses a blogger who works in the multicultural advertising/marketing industry.

It may not be conscious, but Rochelle Newman-Carrasco says that this discrimination is common practice, the so-called “elephant in the room.”

On skin color:

“If truth be told, there are U.S. Hispanic agencies whose staff photos simply do not reflect the diversity of the U.S. Hispanic population as a whole. Black Hispanics have historically found it difficult to find acceptance within some Hispanic circles.”

On accent:

“There are any number of accented Latinos who not only can make themselves understood, but also can out-think and outperform some of their non-accented co-workers. Nonetheless, over the past six months, I have received at least two calls from general-market colleagues about creative positions they were seeking to fill. And in both cases they were hoping I knew someone who “didn’t have an accent” because they didn’t feel their clients would be comfortable.”

Click here to read the full blog post by Newman-Carrasco.

Just a few years ago, you might not see anyone logging onto Facebook on the remote island of Boracay in the Philippines—much less clicking “buy now” to purchase a product they saw on a Web site. An online article explains that because of rampant corruption in the country, consumers didn’t always trust online transactions.

But all of that is changing, says the article’s author Greig Holbrook, who’s an expert in international SEO. And the Philippines is the not the only country that’s beginning to buy online. Holbrook asks:

What does all this mean for online businesses?

It means that having an English-only website is no longer sufficient. For those under the illusion that their potential customers are all surfing the web in English, it is time to realize that the language of the web is multilingual.

People prefer to search and interact online in their own language: it’s natural and comfortable. And the more relaxed a potential customer is when they’re browsing an online store, the more likely they will make a purchase. That is, of course, if they even find your site in the first place.

Holbrook’s insight is invaluable for companies of all sizes hoping to reach out to international consumers. For example, it’s not enough just to translate your Web site (although that’s a great start!). It’s also important to know how people in a particular country search. Knowing, for example, that French people commonly misspell “holiday” as “holliday,” and modifying your keywords to get more hits.

To read the rest of the article and learn about what to consider when marketing internationally, click here.

A recent article in the Washington Post detailed the brain drain that the U.S. is experiencing as talented professionals return to their countries of origin.  And the O.C. Register describes the effect that the large numbers of Mexican immigrants departing has on both the immigrants themselves as well as the businesses that cater to them. 

Both articles mention the industries that suffer when immigrants depart. 

From the first article:

Why does all this matter? Because just as the United States has relied on foreigners to underwrite its deficit, it has also depended on smart immigrants to staff its laboratories, engineering design studios and tech firms. An analysis of the 2000 Census showed that although immigrants accounted for only 12 percent of the U.S. workforce, they made up 47 percent of all scientists and engineers with doctorates. What’s more, 67 percent of all those who entered the fields of science and engineering between 1995 and 2006 were immigrants. What will happen to America’s competitive edge when these people go home?

From the second:

The financial downturn has hit immigrants especially hard because many of the industries that employed them, such as construction, have taken a severe nose dive, said Jorge Chapa, director of the Illinois-based Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society.

Of course, it’s too soon to see the long term effect of this immigrant exodus, but I wonder if native born Americans will get the skills to fill the high tech positions and the gumption to fill the labor-oriented positions.

These days, our media is awash in stories of plant closings, massive lay offs, and companies cutting their budgets any way they can.  But despite the urgency with which companies are trying to save themselves, management needs to take a hard look at the long-term effects of cutting what may now seem a non-critica cost.  Namely, that of diversity and compliance trainings.

A Diversity Executive article makes the case for committing to diversity trainings in spite of tough economic times, especially in the wake of increased discrimination charges.

“When you see the unemployment rate going up at the rate it is, employers can just expect almost on a mathematical basis to see a precipitous rise in discrimination lawsuits,” Atkins said.

“People sue and bring claims when they feel they’ve been treated badly and when their alternatives are scarce,” she explained. “Obviously, in a bad economy when there are fewer jobs, the likelihood of you becoming a litigant is much higher because you don’t have a better-paying job to go to.”

Cutting diversity and compliance training programs could seem like a financially sound step, but it could prove detrimental to the organization in the long term.

In fact, the number of discrimination charges in the private sector rose by 15.2 percent from fiscal year 2007 to 2008, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Lawsuits filed targeted legislation from the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 and the Equal Pay Act of 1964.

To read the entire article, click here.