SMS and machine translation

Zia Daniell Wigder | May 30, 2008, 10:53 AM

One start-up in the translation space that’s come up in conversation a couple of times recently is CelloTrip, an Israeli-based company that’s providing machine translation (MT) of text messages. Currently available in English, Spanish, French, Russian, Hebrew and Arabic, CelloTrip does not aim to provide comprehensive translations, but rather specializes in short sentences and the language used for SMS. Longer-term plans include tapping into voice translation and the traditional instant messaging arena.

The company’s initiatives are noteworthy less in that they’re targeting the mobile platform - several MT offerings are already available via mobile devices - and more because they’re attempting to tackle colloquial language, traditionally an area in which machine translation does not perform well.

CelloTrip faces competition from larger MT companies with established offerings, as well as a handful of niche companies such as Transclick with a similar focus. Transclick requires a $5 monthly subscription but currently offers its service in 16 languages; by contrast, CelloTrip offers fewer languages but bundles in a targeting platform to enable ads to be delivered based on keywords translated.

The topic of instant messaging translation garnered much attention and excitement several years ago, but hasn’t yet caught on as a mainstream application. However, with both mobile and machine translation being areas of great focus for companies this year – Google, for example, added 10 new languages to Google Translate this month and offers its translation services via SMS – expect to see a renewed focus on translation in the mobile messaging arena.