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Blog - When translation is just a drag

When translation is just a drag

posted 2007-07-11 13:55:12
by Steve Billings

Last December, in his presentation at WorldSummit Europe, Jaap van der Meer referred to one view of the future of our industry in which translation becomes, in some ways, like a utility. That is, it becomes as accessible as, say, electricity… just plug into a nearby outlet, and you’ve got it. Electrical power involves some interesting underlying technology (power plant, transmission, grid), initial setup (wiring the building) and behind-the-scenes work (running the plant/grid), and you get billed for what you use, but for routine needs, access to this service is so simple we rarely bother to think about those hidden complexities.

A few weeks ago I watched a demo of a WorldServer connector that enables someone to drag a file into a certain folder, knowing that some time later translated files will (without any further action by the user) appear next to it. So this connector enables (among other things) drag-and-drop translation. As with electrical service, there's some interesting underlying technology (client-side connector communicating via web services over the internet to WorldServer On-Demand, workflow, translation memory, ...), initial setup (configuring the connector for that folder), and behind-the-scenes work (translation, review, …), but for routine needs, access to the service is about as simple as, well, plugging into an outlet.

With this kind of technology it’s not too hard to imagine situations where getting files translated could actually be easier than plugging in. Suppose you’re a product manager at a U.S. company on your way to give a presentation to a customer in, say, Germany. And imagine your laptop is set up for drag-and-drop translation. You’ve got an hour between flights in Amsterdam. Work has been busy, so you compose your presentation during the first flight of your trip (Boston to Amsterdam). You land in Amsterdam with about 5 minutes of life left in your laptop battery, and a presentation you need translated ASAP to German (so you’ll at least have a handout in the local language).

You’re an iPass subscriber, so within a couple minutes after getting off the plane in Amsterdam, you’re connected (wirelessly) to the internet. With your battery showing 3 remaining minutes of life, you drag your presentation into a “rush translation” folder, and off it goes so your language service provider (LSP) can start working on it immediately.  Now you turn your attention to re-charging your laptop battery. Even if you manage to find an electrical outlet (a non-trivial challenge in many airport terminals), and it's available, and within cord-reach of an available seat, did you remember to pack your USA-to-Europe adapter? As your battery expires, you’re thinking it is a good thing that initiating translation took less than a minute. You might even find yourself thinking “If only plugging in were as easy as translation...".

In reality, I suspect drag-and-drop translation, rather than being the final answer, is more like an early step in the evolution of smart client-side technologies that make translation accessible to greater numbers of end users. But it certainly seems like confirmation that translation really is progressing down that path, with the potential to improve how enterprises communicate with their international audiences, and to provide new business opportunities for their LSPs.

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