TECHCRUNCH
JASON KINCAID
10 SEPT 08
AlfaBetic
is a translation service that offers publishers a free way to have their content translated to ten of the web’s most popular languages, which it says will expose them 842 million potential new readers.
The service first runs text through a computer, which is similar to the web-based translation systems offered by Google Translate and a number of other sites. After generating this rough translation, AlfaBetic then presents the translated text to paid human translators, who ensure that everything makes sense. Alphabetic says that over time it will be able to reduce its costs by making the original automatic text more accurate using “statistical machine translation”.
The service’s most impressive feature is its ability to keep comments consistent across every translated site, as well as the publisher’s original blog - I could leave a comment on TechCrunch Russia and have it appear on TechCrunch.com, translated to English. These comments are still translated by machine and read by a human, but the company says that the process only takes a few minutes.