Google has confirmed that it will machine translate patents into more than 29 languages, using the Google Translate interface.
On 30th November, an agreement was reached between Google and the European Patent Office (EPO), in order to facilitate the understanding of patents throughout the world.
“Only a couple of weeks after the relaunch of our website, we achieved our highest revenue ever from online sales! I’d expected it to take longer to achieve results, so am really impressed with the outcome.”
Benjamin Schubert, E-Commerce Project Manager – South African Airways
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a rating system to identify the best translation agency?
Buying translation is a daunting prospect for those who have no prior experience of commissioning this type of service, and if the buyer has little or no knowledge of languages, then it’s hard for them to have a point of reference on what is needed to produce a good translation; specifically: the level of skill, and the combination of education and experience that qualifies one person as a translator rather than simply a native speaker of a language.
Consequently many fall into the trap of buying translation as a commodity; as if buying rice or cotton; and go about comparing quotes on the basis of cost and/or speed of delivery. Translation is a service, however, and like all services, it is performed by people whose education, skills and time all contribute to delivering the final ‘product’ (for want of a better expression).
While it’s logical that you would want a service to be performed by the best people, it’s actually quite alien to most of us to buy a service from a) someone you don’t know b) aren’t ever likely to meet and c) where you as a buyer do not actually consume or experience the service first-hand.
“Web-Translations offered the service we were looking for, and we have found the staff to be helpful and very knowledgeable.
I love the new tools that are being developed to simplify the process of maintaining our international communications in different languages, and would definitely recommend Web-Translations to other companies. We continue to save time and make money efficiently through using this service.”
Richard Gompels – eCommerce Manager – Citigroup
“Price & speed of service are key factors in our choice of translation provider. Web-Translations was recommended to us, and the team has been brilliant at handling our requests, which are often urgent and needed at short-notice. I’d definitely recommend Web-Translations to other companies who need this level of service.”
Katherine Raderecht, Future Publishing Group
“Working with Web-Translations has enabled us to launch in new countries, and to maintain our website for those target markets as well as localizing our application interface.
The translation process is very straightforward, and having a named account manager really helps.”
Ann Wilkinson, Marketing Manager – Esendex
“The results of localizing the key pages into 11 languages have been excellent; the traffic to the French, German and Dutch has been especially good and equates to a cost of 2p per visitor
- that’s fantastic value compared to pay-per-click advertising in a competitive industry like ours!
Web-Translations definitely go the extra mile – we’ll be working with them again to expand the multilingual sites.”
Glenn Garrett, Partner – Quiet PC
“We’ve used Web-Translations for several years, and are really pleased with the outstanding level of customer service we receive.
The Pay-as-you-go arrangement works really well for us, as it makes the process quick and efficient while saving us money as well. The end result is that our promotional literature is now accessible to many more people.”
Niall Hawkins, Marketing Executive – Emerald Insight Publishing
“We were unsure of the best way to present translations of key information on our website – we’d always used PDFs before.
The Wéb-Tränslatiôns team was very knowledgeable – I was impressed by the way they talked me through what was best for us and how their International Blast service could achieve this.”
Paul Hutton, Web Editor – ZSL (London Zoo)
Latest EU regulations demand that all packaging and instruction leaflets for pharmaceutical products and medical devices are translated into the official language of the country they are being exported to.
American companies in this sector who intend to export their products to Europe must comply with these regulations, and indeed should embrace multilingual packaging in order to compete with their European counterparts.
