Takeaways from the translation industry

Zia Daniell Wigder | June 13, 2008, 12:17 PM

Just back from Localization World Berlin where I presented on global social media, focusing on the localization of different types of user-generated content including social networks, blogs and consumer reviews. The conference attracts a large number of language service providers (LSPs), as well as those more broadly involved in the translation and localization industry. It’s quite a different event than those we usually attend, since much of the industry has traditionally focused on areas such as the translation and localization of software and documentation for technology products.

There’s growing interest in the consumer online space, however, particularly as sectors such as online retail increasingly look to international markets for expansion. At this event, social media was a clear favorite topic among presenters, both LSPs and others. Indeed, the issue of crowdsourcing – the translation model being deployed by social networks such as Facebook and Hi5 – continues to be a key topic, particularly when it comes to user-generated content. And developments in machine translation (MT) still featured prominently: AsiaOnline, for example, is applying MT to “bring the world's content to non-English language speakers in Asia”.

A final area of great interest to the LSPs right now is international search. With many companies simply translating their sites rather than optimizing based on keywords used in international markets, LSPs are viewing international SEO as a core growth area over the next few years.