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Machine Translation: Speak English Will Ya?
by Mike Banks Valentine
I know a nice retired couple that used to like foreign travel and
used to take yearly trips abroad and used to regularly broaden their
horizons and expand their experience through cruises, tours and
vacations. I say *used to* because they quit traveling after a trip
to Portugal where they got very frustrated because, "Those
people don't speak English!"
It's a peculiarly American arrogance that we *expect* others to
speak our language, but we don't feel the need to even attempt theirs.
The same affliction seems to extend to email communication among
major U.S. corporations when they receive foreign language email
communications.
A survey conducted by WorldLingo.com found that large U.S. companies,
including Disney, IBM and Microsoft have "inadequate translation
capabilities". Now there's no doubt that WorldLingo.com, a
translation service, has an interest in the outcome of such a survey,
but we'll take their word for it that 50% of U.S. companies don't
even answer emails written in a foreign language. Those that do
reply seem to take way too long to respond and sometimes answer
in the wrong language!
Now I recall those trips to Tokyo and Mexico City where the kind
folks in the hotels and restaurants all seemed to speak English
to me when they saw I didn't know their tongue. But we don't have
the same luxury when it comes to our web sites and email. If a Portugese
visitor comes to your business website, they can find a machine
translation option at the top of the page (click on the country
flag representing any one of eight major languages) so that they
can get the gist of what the site is all about by choosing their
own language from the available options.
I am a guest expert on small business ecommerce where I recently
received a question in Portugese that to my untrained and uneducated
eye appeared to be Spanish, so I did what many do, I went to BabelFish
machine translation service at AltaVista.com and entered the text
into the form, chose "Spanish to English" and got gibberish
in response! Well, I had heard that Portugese resembles Spanish,
so I tried *that* option and got an understandable sentence from
the service.
I have to admit that I didn't respond to that question in the same
way I do most, because I can't entirely trust the machine translation
and wouldn't want to give an incorrect answer. I requested a clarification,
translated by machine to Portugese from English. Now, short of learning
most of the worlds' major languages, how would a respectable ebusiness
deal with questions in a language they don't know?
According to the WorldLingo report offered on their web site: one
company responded with the following:
"I am in receipt of your e-mail. To forward this to an outside
service for interpretation would take several days, and not allow
us to respond to you in the quickest manner. Can you re-submit your
inquiry in English?" This assumes that the person that sent
the email can speak English! Why would they be expected to know
English? There's that peculiar arrogance again!
A friend went to Paris several years ago and found that if she struggled
with her bad French that they had *much* more patience with her
than if she just expected them to switch to English for her benefit.
Perhaps that reputation that the French have for disliking Americans
is because those Americans have that arrogant expectation that the
French speak English!
As ebusiness expands, the English speaking world should expect that
they will be dealing with customers who don't speak English and
that the potential loss of business could be dramatic if they don't
find a way to address the needs of those potential customers. Email
translation service is available from several sources as well.
We could be arrogant about English or we could deal with it by providing
machine translation from our web sites. Some businesses may
find that it is worth their while to have web pages translated by
a human and posted in other languages for the benefit of regular
foreign customers.
Think about your potential audience and consider the possibility
of really going global, not just reaching the English-speaking customers
in foreign countries, but everyone who might buy your product or
service and can access your web site.
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Machine Translation: Speak English Will Ya?
