Google Makes Human Translation a Commodity

August 8th, 2008 Amir Posted in Business, Machine Translation, News |

Google started out by indexing the web. Then, they began selling search ads and then content ads. That’s where the core of their business is and it’s a great one.


Economy 101 for dummies: When your business depends on something, you want to make it into a commodity. In Google’s case, contents is what they depend on. They already went to a great length in making contents a commodity including Gmail, Google Groups, Blogger.com and a heap of free services that make it extra easy to create contents – where ads can be placed and clicks made.

Following their recent Knol addition for creating ‘quality’ contents (which leads to more expensive advertising), Google is now adding their translation service – Google Translation Center.

While, at first glance, it appears as if Google’s main benefit would be the global translation memory, serving their machine translation, I think that there’s a deeper motivation here.

The number of web pages in English is far greater than in any other language. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were so many more web pages to place adsense ads in? So, we can either sit back and wait for this to happen – or we can help. Sure, says Google – let’s help!

So, they build a great translation system, make it free and start getting all these English pages translated to any language in the world.

As others have already noticed, there are a few issues with this approach. They all trace back to accountability. Google is not affiliated with the translators and is not responsible for their work. Clever algorithms will make sure that only really good translators are left in the service. Such great algorithms as those who remove SPAM from blogger, right? (hint: about 11% of blogger blogs promote malware and cons).

I made a short summary of key features that should be in the core of a do-it-yourself translation system:

Feature	Google	ICanLocalize
Ease of use	Google’s system is fine. The problem is, you’ll need to interview each translator yourself.	5 minutes to set up and sort of translation projects, even for complete websites.
Cost	This is where Google excels - their service is free.	80% of the payment goes directly to the translator. Our fee is 20%.
Translator Qualifications	Not guaranteed - will operate with a statistical algorithm.	All translators are certified professional with verified identities and proven credentials and skills.
Quality Guarantee	Not given. Google is not affiliated with anyone.	Of course yes! A translation service must always be responsible for the quality of the work.
Schedule	Who knows. Translators will do their best to get good grades from the scoring system…	If it’s not delivered on time, you don’t pay (like in Dominos Pizza).

There are other technical differences, pros and cons that make for a great discussion - but it’s not the point. What’s important is knowing that someone stands 100% behind the work you’re getting. Not statistically, not usually, but always.

Google’s Translation Center will probably be very popular. My guess is that for translation work that people place in their store-front and which determines how the world sees them, professional translation will still be much better. And, it’s still good for Google. They’ll get multi-lingual contents to place ads in, so don’t worry about them.