What's Your Story Idea? October 1, 2009, 8:30PM EST

White House Challenges Translation Industry to Innovate

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The idea for "White House Challenges Translation Industry to Innovate" came from BusinessWeek reader Calvin Lee, a specialist in translation and localization services, in Singapore.

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The role of translation is not restricted to reaching customers—businesses typically find savings by using the language of countries where they operate. And in a recession, trimming costs is paramount. For example, if a consumer can read a company's manuals on its products or services on the company Web site, that person often will not need to call a customer service center—a major expense for most companies.

Microsoft (MSFT) recently used machine translation for the release of its Microsoft SQL Server 2008, a database management system, which increased the time to market but reduced the project cost. The software was released simultaneously in 11 languages and costs decreased by up to 6% per language with 7 million to 9 million words translated in each language, the company says. Microsoft also plans to release its SQL Server documentation in Turkish for the first time. Dell (DELL), Intel (INTC), and General Motors all say they're also using machine translation.

Human-Assisted Machine Translation

The most advanced translation providers—firms such as Madrid-based Linguaserve, U.K.-based SDL (SDL.L), and Lionbridge Technologies (LIOX), based in Waltham, Mass.—use human-assisted machine translation (HAMT). With HAMT systems, text is fed into a computer program that tackles the first round of word and sentence conversion using statistics, language rules, or matching with past translations. That covers about 90% of the work. A human then steps in to correct mistakes, clarify sentences, and refine the language for the intended audience or market.

In August 2009, Common Sense surveyed 27 corporations, two government offices, and two nongovernmental organizations that used human-assisted machine translation. Individual answers were not released publicly, but companies reported that HAMT doubled the translation output of what humans could do alone. The companies also reported that the hybrid method is up to 45% cheaper than using humans alone. Online tools such as Google Translate (GOOG) and Yahoo's (YHOO) Babel Fish are not yet accurate enough to do the job without humans, DePalma says.

Language translation is far from being mastered by humans, computers, or any mix of the two. Inherent obstacles, such as the speed of computers and the sophistication of software, are restraining the progress of automated translation, says Rayid Ghani, a senior researcher at Accenture Technology Labs (ACN) in Chicago. "More basic research and development is needed," he says. Much of that work will need to take place outside the U.S., he says, because of a lack of texts written in nonmajor languages for researchers to analyze.

The road to globalization, it seems, is paved in words.

Joseph is an innovation and design writer for BusinessWeek.