In the early years of the World Wide Web, nearly all of its content appeared in English. But that is changing quickly.
Today, articles on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia, are available in almost 270 languages, for example. About 36 per cent of the seven million blogs running on WordPress, a free blog-publishing software platform, are in languages other than English, according to founder Matt Mullenweg.
Such changes create a challenge, says Ethan Zuckerman, a research fellow at the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University, in the United States.
"We are all experiencing a smaller internet than we should be," says Zuckerman. "In the user-created Web, we've created a weird dynamic where there is more out there every day — some of it important — but each person can individually read less of it because it's in multiple languages."
A number of services, both automated and human, are helping to translate what Zuckerman calls "the polyglot internet". Once-expensive translation technology is now available free at sites such as Google Translate, which works with about 40 languages. At these sites, users can input a block of text and a computer-generated translation pops up almost instantaneously.
Google Translate can also translate a search term into another language then hunt for it on foreign-language search engines. Results appear in two forms: in the target language and translated back into the user's language.
Translation for the original Chinese and English interface of aNobii (www.anobii.com) - a Hong Kong-based online community for book lovers - into more than a dozen languages is done by operators using Editgrid, a spreadsheet-style program developed by information-technology entrepreneur David Lee Keng-fai.
Machine-assisted translations give workable renderings of basic texts but complicated ideas or phrasings can trip up even the most sophisticated software, particularly in non-Roman languages. When it comes to nuance, "machine translation just won't get you there", says Zuckerman.
People worldwide are stepping up to provide that nuance, free of charge.
Leonard Chien, a student and professional translator and interpreter living in Taiwan, charges US$100 an hour as an interpreter. But for two to three hours a day, Chien volunteers his translation skills to Global Voices, a citizen journalist site (globalvoicesonline.org) founded by Zuckerman and former CNN Beijing bureau chief Rebecca MacKinnon. There, Chien translates posts from around the world into Chinese. Chien is co-director of the Global Voices translation programme, called Project Lingua, which uses volunteers to translate Global Voices posts into 18 languages.
He receives a small monthly stipend for his work as a director, he says, but he is happy to donate his time as a translator. He is among 200 people who have volunteered as translators for Project Lingua.
"I am always excited to see new stories are up," says Chien. "I want to tell my readers, but in different languages."
Volunteers around the world have also participated in the "Google in Your Language" programme, helping the company translate its products into 120 languages.
In May, participants in the annual invitation-only conference hosted by academic organisation TED - Technology, Entertainment, Design - watched speeches given by the likes of former US vice-president Al Gore and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates online with translated subtitles and transcripts. Of the 300 translations made, 200 were by volunteers.
Alexander Klar, a graphic designer in Moehnesee, Germany, estimates he has spent 62 hours translating TED talks into German. Klar says he is inspired by the content itself. "Sharing these ideas over the boundaries of language gives us a chance to forget about the walls and barriers that separate us," he says.
TED began the video-translation project expecting to use mostly professional translators, even though the site had received unsolicited translations from fans of particular talks.
"We thought professional translation was the only way to ensure high-quality work," explains June Cohen, the executive producer for TED Media.
The shift to volunteer translators came last autumn, after Cohen and her colleagues - the roughly 20 full-time employees speak 14 languages among them, she says - read several volunteers' translations and were impressed. "The volunteers are deeply committed to making the best translation and they don't care how long it takes them," says Cohen. "There is a passion there that you don't get from hired guns."
There are also the cost savings. Cohen estimates a professional translation service would have charged US$500,000 for the translations already completed by volunteers and those in the pipeline.
The most obvious potential liability of crowd-sourced translation is quality control. "Google in Your Language" submissions are "reviewed by the company before they are launched," says Nate Tyler, a company spokesman.
Project Lingua and TED require a review by a second bilingual translator before publication and have translators sign their work; the signature discourages sloppy or deliberately malicious translations. It remains to be seen whether volunteer translation efforts can grow beyond isolated groups dedicated to specific causes. One solution may be a hybrid
of machine and human translation. This is the approach of Meedan.net, a site for English and Arabic speakers to discuss the Middle East. Postings are automatically mirrored in the other language, using machine translation, and then refined
by human translators.
Ed Bice, Meedan.net's founder, calls this a "transitional model"; he says he believes machine translation will continue to improve and may even be capable of human-quality translations within the next decade.
In the meantime, says Zuckerman, other solutions are needed. "The internet has the potential to be a global conversation," says Zuckerman. "But unless we solve this problem with languages, it cannot be, and it will not be."
The New York Times
